


Animas

by letterando



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Angst and Feels, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Chicago PD characters - Freeform, DEO agent Shadow Moon, Daemons, F/F, National City Intelligence Unit, Rated For Violence, Spirit Animals, Spiritual, The DEO | Department of Extra-Normal Operations, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-03-15 13:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 57,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13614633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterando/pseuds/letterando
Summary: Omne-Vide:lat. compound word:"omne, omnis" n. n. III: the totality;"vidēre" v. tr. II: to see.A person who can discern, in various degrees of clearness and to the capacity of their eyesight, all Animas, manifest and non-manifest.Or, Alex is an Omne-Vide and it's a secret she's determined to take to the grave.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No point going on writing if this topic isn’t appealing to anybody. The ending is still fuzzy but I have some material to proof-read if anybody’s interested.  
> Set before Canon. Everybody has Animas, even aliens, from the moment they set foot on Earth. I’ve tried to keep the descriptions of Animas as fuzzy as possible, so you can fill in with your endless imagination. Unfortunately I haven’t had much success in this department with Maggie’s Anima, so you can all easily assume where it comes from.  
> All Animas will be addressed as ‘it’ for now, although they’re living creatures so I use ‘who’ and ‘whom’ instead of ‘which’ in compound sentences.  
> Alex has lived in National City for a couple of years or so, and has just been promoted as a DEO field agent.  
> Maggie has lived in National City for a year or so, and has worked as an NCPD policewoman for a few months.  
> Alex is 27, Maggie is 25.  
> Un-betaed up to chapter 9.

**Ănĭma:**   _lat. animă, animae, n. f. I._  
Breath; air or wind; soul; life principle or life energy; human being; (plural) shadows or souls of the dead.

.

.

.

It is estimated that 3% of the global population is a Vide. Due to the difficulty in conducting through surveys in some areas of the planet, the rough estimate is 3,2%.

There are so few people who can see a person’s Anima at one time in the whole world that almost all of the supposed Vides who are heroes of tales, or are guest stars on television, are invented from scratch or are faking it.

And people revel in this hidden truth. Faking at being a Vide is a thousand times better than being one. Adored and feared in equal measures in ancient times, in modern times the only Vides who live past middle age inhabit small villages so secluded that nobody but the inner circle of the villagers knows about them.

A person’s Anima is said to be the truest representation of the self. Different schools of thought have debated about this, but all of them agree that a person’s Anima is private. Religious schools of thought call Animas sacred.

Almost all the times that an Anima manifests, it will do so in the company of their human, and theirs alone.

Being a Vide means intruding upon a person’s own soul, and there are very, very few people who take kindly to something like that.

.

.

.

Alex walked out from the gym locker room with a good thrum in her limbs and torso and the remnants of her migraine slowly dying away.

That day, she was to be promoted as a field operative of the DEO, and she didn’t need any unwelcome distractions, migraines included.

The hall of the gym was bright with its glass-paned walls and the sunlight streaming through fluffy-looking clouds. She wondered if Kara was faring well, what with this being her fourth week in National City, but when she opened their chat she’s soon reminded that Kara was too busy getting chewed out almost all day every day to use her powers accidentally and bust her human persona.

Alex tried to quench the slim trail of sadistic happiness at seeing Kara’s reactions for being scolded so thoroughly and so regularly at work. If Cat Grant kept it up for the next five years, Kara was going to learn what Alex went through at home, alone with mom, after dad had disappeared.

Perched on her shoulders, in the corner of her eye she saw her Anima bristle happily at her thoughts, and a sick feeling set in Alex’s guts because other people’s Animas were ten times more terrified around her when her Anima was happy.

As usual, Alex didn’t pay it any attention. She’d barely caught the happy shivering of shadows from her peripheral vision, and she focused on walking down the hallway and not looking at any other person’s Anima, fully formed or otherwise.

But then something happened. A rare occurrence that Alex hadn’t seen since the arrival of Kara on Earth.

Her Anima bolted off. In a short leap, it was several feet ahead of her. It was by far the farthest distance it’s travelled from her since Kara’d showed up on her parents’ doorstep.

More interestingly, her Anima bolted towards one other Anima, a Humanoid type. Or, well, at least what passed for Humanoid in the Anima world. It had a tail, its fangs-like teeth were mostly outside of its mouth, it had three pairs of ear-like appendices, and its stubby claws protruded directly from the stumps of its arms. But it stood on two legs, and it possessed all the main features required in the Humanoid category and it did not resemble any beast closely.

There was also the interesting addition of the flaming patterns covering its body.

Humanoid and Elemental. Count Alex impressed.

Her Anima slithered low on the ground and startled the other, who promptly burst into flames.

Alex watched the two Animas watch one another for a moment, careful to do so from her peripheral vision. Then the flaming Anima opened its mouth and raised its arms, and Alex’s Anima extended a wisp of shadows, as if in greeting.

At the sight Alex stopped short so abruptly that her feet collided with something on the floor.

Her DEO training instructed her to sacrifice her non-dominant hand and she managed to stop her fall with her left hand and fuck! That hurts.

“Puta mierda!” a feminine voice said.

When Alex opened her eyes she laid on her left side on the floor, looking at a bag, a gorgeous woman with dark skin and black hair, and the two Animas.

Her eyes connected with a pair of human dark chocolate eyes, before they slipped into otherworldly red-orange orbs with dark lilac pupils. That was when she realized that the woman and her Anima’s expression were the same.

Let alone the woman, but the Anima was looking at her in sheer concern. Her brain ignored the pain in her left hand as she wracked her memory to spot for a similar occurrence. There was none. She had never been scrutinized with such concern by a fully-formed Anima before.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” said the woman with a tone that implied more desperation than the current predicament implied, as if something had already happened to her and Alex falling had only added to that.

Alex did try to keep her eyes on the woman, but it was so difficult when an Anima looked so upset for her and was talking to her, too. Alex was a Non-Audite, she couldn’t hear what Animas said, but by the looks of it, it had to be questions about her well-being.

The colors of the body and the flames of the Anima had turned yellow and green, tiny wisps of fire coiled themselves around its arms as the Anima extended them towards her, as if it wanted to help her getting up.

“Are you okay? Do you need a hand to stand up?” said the woman and Alex re-focused her attention on her.

She got hit by a wave of embarrassment at having laid on the ground staring at nothing for who knows how many seconds, her cheeks started to burn and she scrambled upright, wincing at the pain shooting from her left hand and wrist.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

As if Alex hadn’t been shocked into next week already, her Anima decided it was time for another surprise and _spoke,_ wisps of shadows raising in the air.

Most people could hear the Animas when they were manifest, Self-Audites, but Alex guessed that she had traded that ability at birth for being a Vide. Thus, she couldn’t even begin to guess what her Anima was saying, and she couldn’t even attempt to read its lips because its mouth was shrouded by whirling shadows and blackness. She could gauge its emotions by the behavior of the shadows and she knew that it spoke by the dark puffs it emitted as it spoke.

Whatever it said, the woman’s Anima went bonkers.

Blue flames erupted from all of its body for a moment as a look of pure shock settled on its face. When the flames receded a little, it resumed speaking, floundered its arms around and looking so scared that Alex was tempted to comfort it.

Meanwhile, the woman left her bag on the floor and shot off down the hallway.

But wait. Her. Anima. Was. Still. Here!

Alex would have gaped if she hadn’t schooled herself in not reacting to Animas. The woman rounded her the corner of the hallway and her Anima was still there with Alex.

 _What the hell_ , was the only rational thought Alex was capable of for a minute there.

The corridor was empty and quiet. Most people were either taking their time in the showers, or in the current round of classes or training sessions.

Alex had trained herself not to look directly at Animas all her life, but in that situation she had to actively will herself to keep her gaze on the flaming Anima’s belly instead of meeting its eyes. She still couldn’t believe that the Anima was keeping itself so far from its human willingly.

She dusted herself off with her right hand, checked that no item in her bag was broken, checked her phone. She tried to do anything but stare at the two Animas, but even so she couldn’t ignore how chummy the woman’s Anima and hers were looking.

Almost all the Animas Alex had come across seemed to be entirely too happy to stay away from hers. Even in a crowd, the Animas tended to give hers wide berth, keeping themselves as far from their humans as they possibly could.

It was so upsetting to see an Anima so far from its human and at the same time so friendly with hers that she couldn’t help it, her eyes were glued to the easy chatter that the two Animas had going on.

The flaming Anima still looked apologetic and frantic, but the more her own Anima talked – and it was so strange to see slithers of shadows coming out of its mouth in such quick succession – the more the flames turned from aqua to a tentative kelly green and on some tips, yellow.

Alex wondered if the slow-coming calm of the Anima was a reflection of the woman’s feelings or if the flaming Anima had such a developed personality that it could harbor separate mood too. The Anima became more and more intriguing by the second.

Suddenly, Alex heard hurried footstep from behind the corner of the hallway, echoing in the quiet space.

Her Anima then floated back close to her, and she scrutinized it as subtly as she could, as she’d never seen it so animated towards another Anima before. It was watching the flaming Anima, who hadn’t gotten close, and the two were still exchanging words by the looks of it.

And then, Alex didn’t mean to do it, the rational part of her brain was screaming against it, blaring alarms all over the place, but she raised her gaze to the eyes of the other Anima anyway.

And the other Anima looked at her, stared at her right in the eyes, with a stunned expression, and slowly but resolutely raised its hand with its four chubby claws, and _waved_ at her.

It _waved_ at her, as if it knew that Alex could see it.

It _waved_ at her, as if her Anima had just confessed that Alex was a Vide.

But that was impossible. Her Anima was the manifestation of herself, it would have never betrayed her – it _could not_ ever betray her, since she had no intention of ever telling a soul (apart from Kara) about her being a Vide, so her Anima had to feel that way, too.

She looked at her Anima but couldn’t gauge it emotions. It stayed beside her, motionless, wordless, impassive, looking at her from undistinguishable eyes, and nodded the top part of its shadows, what passed for its head, slowly.

And that was all the confirmation Alex needed.

.

.

.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The consequence of Alex literally stumbling into Maggie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kind words of support! I didn't even know that the Sanvers fandom was so active. You are all so wonderful.  
> How do you like the designs of Maggie's and Alex's Animas so far? What are your mental pictures of them?

**Nihil-Vide** : _lat_. From:

 **nĭhĭl** : _nihil, nullius rei, pr. ind_  .

Nothing.

And:

 **vĭdĕo** : _vĭdes, vidi, visum, vĭdēre, v. tr. II.  
_ To see.

The rarest category of individual known to humankind.

Nihil-Vides can discern their own Animas, only when these are manifest, and not in clear terms.

The rate of born Nihil-Vide individuals at any given moment in time in the world is near zero.

However, Ipsum-Vide individuals can become Nihil-Vides following life-changing events such as immunodeficiency diseases, bodily maim and deep-rooted psychological traumas.

.

.

.

Fuck. Why the hell did her Anima do that?

Didn’t Alex read enough about Vides being flayed alive, burnt alive, buried alive, experimented on alive when she was a child? Didn’t the message _Do not ever reveal that I’m a Vide to other Animas so they won’t rattle me to their humans_ get across?

 _What the fuck_ , she wanted to scream at her Anima. But her eyes were glued to the woman’s Anima, who was shyly retreating its hand and smiling.

S _hit_ , Alex thought when she heard approaching footsteps around the corner, and her heart started to beat so fast that she got nauseated for a moment.

She recognized the panic attack as soon as it started, the ringing in her ears, the shaking in her hands, the coldness, the numbness, and she knew what to do, breathe, but for the life of hers she couldn’t bring herself.

What was the point in calming down anyway?

The Anima was going to tell its human, the woman was going to tell her friends and family, her or her friends were going to tell their Animas to act oddly in front of her, to catch her attention, and she was going to slip up, she was going to get caught on camera, and that would be it, that was going to be end of for life. That was how Vides used to be caught in modern times, registrations and videos and witnesses, and since now everybody and their mother had a smartphone with an HD camera, Vides could get caught way more easily than 50 or so years before.

What was worse is that she worked for a government black ops organization. The public wasn’t even going to hear of her, apart from a few conspiracy websites in the dark recesses of the Internet. In a matter of days, the DEO would bring her in for a psych eval and she would never see the light of day again.

She locked eyes with the woman’s Anima, her body thrumming with sheer panic, the first word dying in her throat before she tried again.

“Pleas-“ she whispered, but it was still a pitifully inaudible sound, choked off by fear. She swallowed, hoping to swallow her heart too, since it felt like it was right up there with her tonsils.

“Please don’t tell her,” she whispered to red and orange eyes.

The Anima looked stunned, and she understood why. She was probably the first human who had ever talked to directly apart from its own human and its human’s family members.

“Please,” she whispered again to the still dumbfounded Anima.

For a moment, she considered getting on her knees in an empty hallway for an invisible being of flames, but her Anima startled her out of her stupor by wrapping itself around her shoulder and laying its head on her shoulder.

Alex almost flinched away because the last time her Anima tried to cuddle with her like that, to comfort her, was when she overheard a senior DEO agent telling director Henshaw that she didn’t have it in her to be one of them, she was athletic but not combative, she was too soft, and lacking resolution.

The flaming Anima stared at her, still shocked out, when the woman appeared from behind the corner.

Alex immediately looked down, cradling her left wrist with her right hand, centering herself on that pain and trying to regain a modicum of composure.

The rush of panic muted the sounds a bit, and when she regained some of her senses, she was able to hear the stream of apologies when the woman was in front of her, and suddenly an ice pack appeared and it was wrapped slowly around her wrist.

She looked up to kind, apologetic dark chocolate eyes, and she marveled at the very dark hue that made the pupils unable to stand out clearly. It was a fascinating color.

“I saw you falling on it. Keep it on for at least five minutes, okay? Do you need to go to the hospital? I’ll call the ambulance.”

Emerging from her panic, Alex breathed deeply and the woman’s low timbre came to life as a mid-tone, slightly raucous sound. It was a nice voice, one that would have surely sounded even better over a breakfast table, or in one of her favorite diners, on at the opposite end of the couch in lazy hours right after work.

It was also a voice that would have sounded at its best across the pillow, low and more raucous after a good night’s sleep, a carefully hidden, mutinous corner of her mind whispered.

“Thanks. I’m fine, really. Just a slip. I don’t need the hospital, are _you_ alright though? I think I hit your shoulder with my knee at some point.”

“You rolled off immediately. Huh, keep that steady here,” the woman replied easily, leaning over and carefully maneuvering the ice pack on Alex’s wrist.

Her fingertips were freezing due to having carried the pack, but Alex felt a jolt of warmth, for a second, when the woman’s fingers grazed the inside of her wrist. The sensation slithered up her arm and she had to suppress a full body shiver.

 _Must be from the adrenaline rush_ , she thought, as she took in some deep breaths.

She resolutely did not look at the woman’s Anima, whose flames were turning orange in patches, and who was conversing with her Anima like nothing had happened.

The woman apologized some more, Alex apologized for her distraction, and when the woman suddenly looked down at her bag, her mouth curved into a wide smile and Alex felt all the air leaving her lungs at once because nobody had warned her about _dimples_.

They were so cute. Shit.

“Thanks for minding my bag, by the way,” the woman said, and Alex turned into trained enforcer of the law mode in a second.

“You shouldn’t have left it abandoned, you know. What if I took something? What if somebody passed and I didn’t see them and they got away with your things? You should be more careful.”

Alex thought she was using her ‘ _I’m a trained recruit about to be promoted to field agent of a black ops organization_ ’ tone, but the woman’s smile only got wider. Gosh, those dimples were something else. And the slight shift in the woman’s shoulder as she inclined her head and regarded Alex more attentively should not have been as endearing as it looked.

What was worse, their Animas were still having a whole separate conversation of their own and Alex was dying, _dying_ to know what they were saying, especially her own.

The woman’s Anima was back to full-on bright red flames, hopping a bit in place and gesticulating with its claws. Judging by its beaming expression, it didn’t seem to think that Alex’s Anima was being rude by continuing to stay protectively coiled around her shoulders.

She knew that her own Anima was still talking because of the regular puffs of shadows coming from the general direction of its mouth. It’d talked more than she’d ever seen it doing, less alone all at once. She was absolutely floored by the knowledge and couldn’t make heads nor tails of the situation for now.

The woman remarked that Alex didn’t look like a petty criminal, and Alex scoffed, sniping a snarky reply. She picked up her bag with her free hand, since the left was still enclosed by the woman’s petite hands. And that was when she remembered why she was late in the changing rooms.

Alex motioned towards the reception desk, thinking that the woman would step back, but either her sense of duty or her guilt were still strong, since she followed close behind, keeping a close eye on the icepack.

By the desk she exchanged another couple of remarks with the woman. She wasn’t a talkative person, especially around strangers, but she heard a nice trail of sassiness under the woman’s remarks, and she assumed that they would be trading quick shots if the woman were in a better mindset at the moment.

With her left still encased in ice and her fingers going numb, she managed to open her bag only thanks to the woman’s lending her a hand. Then, the receptionist finished typing whatever she was filling in, Alex took out the item she had found in the locker room and the woman quieted down abruptly, but she paid her no mind, as she needed to do this otherwise she was going to forget about it.

“Excuse me, I’ve found this set of keys on the floor in the changing room. They were under a locker, probably fell down from a purse. Do I need to sign a mo-“

She couldn’t end her sentence because a hand almost slammed on her hand holding the keys on the desk.

She turned around, ready to snap, but the other woman looked at her with unshed tears in her eyes.

“Oh my fucking god, thank-!”

She didn’t even finish the sentence because and the next thing Alex knew, she was engulfed in the tightest one-armed hug she’d ever had except for Kara.

She didn’t do many hugs those days, but she had experienced her share of drunk hugs back in her party-all-night phase, and this one topped them all, even with her left hand hanging awkwardly beside them.

The woman’s body was tiny, probably around 5.2”, but she was strongly built, because the arm encasing her shoulder and the abdomen pressing against hers felt solid and muscly. Obviously the woman worked out regularly, mused Alex as she desperately tried to pry her mind off of the feeling of the woman’s chest pressed against hers. It felt supple and way bigger than hers and she tried to cut that thought at the root before it caused her to spontaneously combust.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” said the woman excitedly, and Alex tried not to focus on how good the woman’s voice sounded when she was happy in contrast to how it sounded before.

It was none of her business, so she looked at woman’s Anima instead, who was right in front of her and was emitting bursts of flames from all over its body that looked like the lovechild of explosions and fireworks. It looked positively jubilant, hooping in place, waving its arms, and smiling at her and talking.

Alex had vague memories of her parents’ Animas smiling directly at her like that, but they were blurry with the distance of infancy. She’d soon learned that being a Vide is not a good thing in the world, thus she always avoided looking at all Animas directly.

And there, with a stranger’s warm body plastered in front of her, with her Anima who knew about her being a Vide, who was smiling and hollering something at her, Alex felt a tug in her chest at the absurd, short-lived joyful situation.

It was a painful feeling, running deep within her, and it was frighteningly similar to what she’d felt that night in bed with Vicky during their last sleepover.

.

.

.

“I thought I’d lost them-“

“Such a pain to contact my landlord-“

“You can check they’re mine yourself-“

Alex wasn’t sure on what to focus. The teared up woman floundering in front of her, or the jubilant Anima who kept on alternating hopping in glee and patting her Anima excitedly.

Alex was tempted to tell the woman that she didn’t need to demonstrate that the car keys were indeed hers because her Anima’s reaction was coherent to hers. But of course she couldn’t say it, so she nodded absent-mindedly, and they left the ice pack to the receptionist, gathered their things and made their way to the underground parking lot.

As they reached the parking floor, Alex motioned towards the cars section, but the woman’s Anima floated to the bike section, and after a quick glance and a short nod to Alex the woman followed in that direction.

They walked down the line of bikes until Alex’s own. Her Ducati was the last of the row, the next vehicle was the first car of the car section.

Suddenly, she stopped hearing the woman’s shoes on the asphalt and turned around to see the woman sliding in-between her bike and the second to last, an old-looking Yamaha, patting it affectionately, before she extended her hand for the keys.

Alex told herself that she’d acquiesced so quickly only because she could see the woman’s Anima hopping on the passenger seat excitedly and not because of the sneaky dimples.

“Here, I’ll show you my ID and license just in case,” said the woman, opening the bike’s trunk and shifting through it.

The cute wrinkle on the forehead of the woman, as proof of her determination, made Alex laugh.

“Come on, you don’t need to do that. I’m glad you got your keys back. Lovely Yama you’ve got here by the way. It was their flagship model when it was released,” she commented, trying to ignore the conversation that the woman’s Anima and hers had struck up again.

“Yeah but it’s old and moody. I hope to get a semi-new Honda in a year or so,” whispered the woman affectionately, as if afraid that the bike would hear and take offense.

Luckily she had foregone used bikes, but she’d heard enough horror stories to be sympathetic.

They stood there, talking about bike models, fuel, oil, and good bike services in the city.

The more Alex heard the woman’s voice, from panicked, to excitedly grateful, from sassy to normal, the more she wanted to hear.

Thanks to the ingrained DEO training, she gleaned that the woman was adjusting to her job, that she was proud of her achievements so far, that she preferred to be witty and sassy to serious, and that she was relatively new to life in the city.

Her Animas were still carrying their own parallel conversation, however her own was talking much less often than before, Alex noticed with a considerably amount of relief.

As the woman adjusted her bag in the trunk and took out her phone to keep it in her jacket’s pocket, she checked her phone with an apologetic look. The gesture reminded Alex that she herself hadn’t checked her own phone in ages. It was probably exploding with Kara’s messages about the friendly colleague named Winn or something, the nightmare-inducing Cat Grant, and her pangs of hunger.

Thank goodness there were no messages from the DEO. She’d been checking her texts religiously if the promotion announcement and consequent demonstrations had been rescheduled, but what happened after she fell completely blew all thoughts about the DEO out of her mind, which was nearly impossible those days.

“I can call the hospital for an ambulance or drive you there but you kind of need to tell me now ‘cause I’ve got to go work in a bit,” informed her the woman, looking up apologetically from her phone. On the passenger seat, the flaming Anima looked like it wanted to protest the current schedule.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine to drive. I need to head to work, too.”

“But- Are you sure? I know where the hospital is, I can get us there in ten, tops.”

Alex smiled at the almost pleading tone of the woman. She shook her head and rounded her bike, unlocking it. Her Anima slid off her and coiled itself around the handlebar, saying something in a slow puff of shadows.

To avoid focusing on it, Alex tried to handle both bars. Her left hand was a bit painful, but nothing that can’t handle a twenty minutes ride to the DEO. Although the demonstrations to the new recruits after the promotion was going to be a bit of a question mark.

She just needed to be careful, she told herself, shaking her head and looking at the other woman.

Without having realized it, Alex was on her bike, hands on the bars, and her thigh was touching the side of the tank of the woman’s bike, and the woman was looking at her with a glint in her eyes, a mix of awe and determination.

It was so weird for Alex then because her look was perfectly replicated on her Anima’s face.

“So the sweet Ducati is yours, huh.”

The woman spoke with a tone that made Alex think the word ‘lewd,’ but she shook the sensation off as her mind playing tricks on her.

They got ready to go, exchanging quips about old and new bike models, and Alex ducked her head to her head because she was truly starting to enjoy the woman’s easy-going sassiness, but the bitter truth was that the woman’s Anima knew about her and that in a few hours that very woman would be out for the scoop of the century.

She pushed her head in her helmet but kept the visor up. She subtly looked at the woman’s Anima, wanting to plead her case with her gaze again, but the flaming creature’s was looking at its human getting on her bike, and Alex’s eyes were magnetized to the way the woman’s leg muscles flexed under her jeans as she adjusted her feet on the foot-pegs.

Alex wondered if that was considered checking another woman out, and she immediately turned to look at her control panel so fast she almost got whiplash.

Her Anima was still coiled around her shoulders, as usual when she rode her bike. Its mouth was so close to Alex’s shoulder that when it spoke, the puffs of shadows it emitted clouded her vision for a few seconds and she repressed the impulse to hiss at it to shut up.

She was trying to think. There was a thought, nibbling at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t bring it to the surface.

“Oh,” said the woman beside her, and suddenly there was a light, warm pressure against her hip.

She looked down and saw the hand of the woman touching her, half on her jacket and half on her trousers. It was a tiny hand, with a skin tone that Alex still couldn’t place. She tried to associated to a type of leather, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint its exact parallel. Then on top of the hand, appeared chubby claws.

Alex looked up and saw the woman smile, behind her, her chubby Anima smiled too.

“I almost forgot to ask you your name.”

“Alex,” she said, feeling her cheeks heating up.

She wondered why the woman’s smile, coupled with the parallel touch of her Anima, were suddenly affecting her. Maybe she strangeness of being smiled directed by an Anima hadn’t worn off yet.

“I’m Maggie,” said the woman – Maggie – and Alex’s jumbled thoughts only managed to ramble about lovely women and even lovelier names.

But she shut down that train of thought faster than lightning, since her Anima was still speaking, and who knew what secrets it was still spilling. It had spoken until a minute before, but Alex didn’t know why, she was starting to get hyper-aware of it. Maybe that was the gnawing thought at the back of her mind.

Alex sneaked a peek at Maggie to see her and her Anima smiling radiantly, and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore.

It had all been too much all at once.

Her heart was still doing somersaults from the panic, the embarrassment and something else, her cheeks were on flame, and she was thinking thoughts that hadn’t dared to resurface since high school.

She needed to be alone for a while.

“Sorry I really need to go now,” she breathed out hurriedly, starting her bike.

“Um, sure, me too. You sure you don’t want me to accompany to the hospital? Or home? I know that came off as creepy but I’m just worried.”

Alex turned as Maggie pushed her head in her helmet, she also kept her visor up and was regarding her dead seriously. The look sent a tingle of excitement down Alex’s spine, which she attributed to the chilly winter wind and not to the fact that resolute women were hot.

“I really am fine. Thank you for the ice, it was nice of you.”

“Psh. Please. If _I_ start say thank you again we’ll be both late for work,” said Maggie, starting her bike too.

Then the combined sound of the engines made it too loud to say anything else other than screamed byes, and Alex focused on driving out of town and not on dimply black-haired women and flaming Animas.

Under the protection of her helmet, Alex told her Anima to enjoy its last moments of freedom before she became a guinea pig in a government laboratory.

.

.

.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex wakes up to flames and red eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agent Moon is Shadow Moon from American Gods (2017-).  
> Do you think I should add the fandom even though it's not a cross-over? I'm so bad at tags.

**Ipse-Vide:** _lat_. From:

 **Ipse:** _ipsa, ipsum, pr. def_.

 _In conjunction with pronouns (ego ipse, tu ipse, etc):_ one self.

And:

 **vĭdĕo** : _vĭdes, vidi, visum, vĭdēre, v. tr. II  
_ To see.

The most densely populated category across all countries and historical periods.

An Ipse-Vide is an individual who can discern their own Anima when it’s manifest, and who can discern other people’s manifested Animas.

Ipse-Vide individuals may rarely discern their own un-manifested Animas, most often in case of deep emotional stress such as grief, trauma, and danger.

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A week later Alex woke up to flames and a pair of red and dark orange eyes, with sunburst-shaped dark lilac pupils.

A smile with all of its teeth outside the mouth greeted her, but she had already fallen into trained military mode, so her thighs were already pushing herself to a kneeling position, heart thrumming with adrenaline, and her hand had already swung the gun she kept in hidden holder between the mattress and the headrest, safety off, pointed and ready to fire.

Before she could realize what her body had done and lower the gun, the Anima had rolled off the mattress, looking terrified, and it was now crouched on the floor by the bed, only the top of its rounded rear visible.

Breathing heavily, Alex lowered the gun. Her heartbeat was a slamming bass sound in her ears, and in her energized state of mind, her rationality immediately analyzed the Anima’s reaction.

From what she had observed, Animas only understood weapons when their humans were held at gunpoint in real life experiences. Her family had kept a couple of firearms in the basement, but neither her father’s nor her mother’s Anima were afraid of them, even though they both regularly watched whatever action movie was chosen during movie nights.

If the flaming Anima knew what the gun means, it meant that its human – it meant that _Maggie_ – had been threatened at gun point at some moment in her life.

Alex didn’t know why exactly, but she was bothered by that prospect. Slowly, she slipped the gun back in its holder.

“Hey there. I’m sorry I reacted like that, it’s okay now,” she said in a hopefully soothing tone, and true enough, the Anima uncurled itself from the floor, back straightening up, looking less and less scared by the second.

In case of fully formed Animas, Animas and humans could harbor different emotions at the same time, but they mostly ended up influencing one another’s mood. Alex hoped that the scare she gave to the Anima didn’t impact too much on Maggie’s morning routine.

Kneeling on her bed with a stranger’s Anima in front of her, she finally honed in on the thought that her Anima hadn’t woken her up when the Anima appeared.

Also, if the Anima was there, it meant that its human wasn’t that far. Did Maggie somehow find out where she lived and was she leading an army of journalists to her door to expose her as a Vide to the world? The thought made her jump from the bed into the first pieces of clothing she could find. She grabbed her service gun from the holster in the hidden compartment in her closet and walked to the door. A gun wasn’t ideal against a horde of reporters, but she liked its weight in her hand, it had quickly become soothing. It spoke volume on her volume, but she always ignored that thought.

Finally, she turned from the bathroom to stand in front of the flaming Anima, who was sporting a confused expression and was saying something, and only then she realized that she had scoured every inch of her apartment three times and she had been walking in circles for minutes.

Scowling at her jumbled mind, she walked in the day area, let the gun rest on her kitchen island, and opened the blinds at the windows. The street looked normal. She walked out of the door. The corridor was silent.

The next time she found the Anima in front of her was again in her bedroom and she almost tripped on the damn creature.

Then, finally, her mind reconciled assumptions and reality, and she begrudgingly admitted that her Anima wasn’t in the vicinity and that Maggie’s Anima truly was in her apartment, god-knew-how-far from Maggie.

The second Anima in the world apart from hers who knew about her being a Vide was in front of her, talking and gesticulating widely and as reality sunk in, Alex couldn’t fight the sigh of frustration at the sheer absurdity that her morning had just taken.

She massaged her temple, content to feel the twinge of ache in her forearms and wrists, reminiscent of the workout and sparring session of the day before at the DEO. Thank goodness Directior Henshaw had let her go through all the demonstrations and sparring with the recruits, even though he somehow knew that she was injured.

She opened her eyes. Nope. Anima still there and talking. Oh, well, it had been worth a try.

“Um… You know I can’t understand what you’re saying, right?”

Her words stopped the talking Anima. For some reason it looked puzzled, it blinked several times, then its expression cleared, smiling and opening its arms widely.

It talked again, but of course she couldn’t hear it. The way the Anima gesticulated was sort of endearing but she also sad. It seemed to really want to talk to her, but it wasn’t possible. Poor dear.

“Still can’t hear you, sorry,” she said, and the Anima looked even more puzzled than before.

It walked to the bed, and its claws _dug_ into the bed linens _._

Oh.

_Oh._

Holy shit, did it just manifest in front of Alex? Did a near stranger’s Anima just fucking manifest in front of her?

“Okay. Oh my god,” she remarked, because even though she lived alone a fucking stranger’s Anima manifesting right in front of her to talk to her had to be commemorated by an out-loud remark. In the meantime, she waited for her mind to reboot from the shock.

The Anima smiled at her good-naturally and smoothing the bed linens out for good measure. In case, you know, it hadn’t been clear enough that it had motherfucking manifested for an almost complete stranger.

Then it opens its arms again and said something.

Alex squinted this way and that at the Anima, trying to determine whether its shape had become clearer, or whether its flaming patterns had become more saturated than before. Excuse her for rudely using another person’s Anima as a guinea pig, but it was the first Anima outside of her family members’ who had openly demonstrated that it was manifest in front of her.

She truly tried to see if there any differences. But she could notice none.

Sighing at her stupid Vide sight, she was suddenly struck by a horrible thought.

“Wait a minute,” she instructed, and the Anima obediently calmed down and listened, and how fucking weird was that.

“Is your human in mortal danger? In a life or death situation?” she asked, because that was the only scenario in which the Anima could have sought her that came to her mind.

The Anima shook its head no so vehemently that its whole body shook with it for a few moments when it stopped, almost eliciting a laugh out other.

Then, of course, it went on speaking excitedly. After a few extra seconds Alex decided with a sigh that it was high time to bring it back to reality.

“I still can’t hear you, you know?”

It stopped the Anima short. It patted the linens again, the frame of the bed thudded under its clawed fist. It spoke again.

Alex just shook her head and tried not to let the Anima’s look of utter devastation get to her. She squirmed under its dejected gaze, flames dying out and turning yellow and green, until she gave up.

“Maybe we can find something to let you communicate with me? Drawing maybe? I’ll get a notebook, it should be here somewhere.”

And that was how Alex ended up roaming her apartment for a notebook right out bed, before her washing up, before her breakfast, before anything else.

But because she was a responsible adult (but especially because she needed the bathroom and it had been 8 hours since she last checked how her period was coming along), she left the Anima with a pen and a notepad as soon as she found them.

If the Anima was there to let a horse of journalists in, fuck it, she’d shoot them or something.

Once she emerged from the bathroom, she felt finally awake and ready to put the weird morning illusion behind her. She needed to check her lab mask at the DEO, she had surely inhaled some strange alien pollen that had made her see Maggie’s Anima in her apartment.

When she entered the day area again, the Anima’s got the coffee machine going and was taking everything resembling breakfast food out of her kitchen’s drawers.

“Um..” Alex said eloquently, because she was that smart.

The Anima beamed at her, waving, and held up the notepad as she approached the food-laden table.

 _Hi,_ said the first page with a string of exclamation marks, hearts and smiley faces.

 _I’m Fiamma! /ˈfjamma/,_ said the second page.

 _I’ll stay with you today. Yours is with Maggie. Unless it’s a super emergency then we swap. Yours said it was okay!_ sported the third page.

Of course it said it was okay, that sneaky bastard. If it only thought to manifest in front of Maggie, Alex was going to have its fucking head on a silver platter. So that was why her Anima and Fiamma had been conversing so much the day before, they were plotting this!

 _Let’s have breakfast! Strong breakfast = strong day! Yay breakfast!! s_aid the fourth page, framed by hearts and smiles and Alex honestly couldn’t find it in her to be angry with the sweet bundle of flames and smiles.

Alex rarely went further than coffee and some kale, especially since she’d made it into the DEO, she couldn’t slack off outside of Kara’s pizza and potstickers nights.

But she set down for breakfast with another Anima since she left for college, and it was so strange and also domestic in a terrifying way.

What the hell was happening, she thought, as she poured soy milk in her cup and tried not to stare at the practiced way the Anima sat down on the chair.

Her Anima almost never manifested those days, and it usually stayed curled protectively around  her shoulders before her coffee, and it watched her go about her routine still coiled around her shoulder but somehow less protectively after coffee.

On the contrary, Maggie’s Anima wanted to do everything.

It was a bit too excited for the early hour, so Alex left it rushing at the sound of the coffee machine and stared, amazed at the expert ease with which Fiamma balanced the coffee to the table and sat back down, beaming widely.

“Thank you,” she said, impressed. Her father’s and mother’s Animas, although fully formed, rarely demonstrated such masterful fine movements with their appendices.

Fiamma beamed at her, tiny explosions erupting all over its body, and it said something, but didn’t write it down. Alex idly wondered whether its fire made sounds.

After breakfast, the Anima slowly picked up the pad against and revealed another page.

_I didn’t say anything to anybody that you can see us. You humans call it Vide, right?_

Alex nodded slowly, clutching the kitchen counter and not hearing the running water as it rinsed the cups. Her heart started slamming in her earlobes and in her throat, and she thought that she needed to make sure those pages were burned before she left for work.

She couldn’t risk it. Or, well, she couldn’t risk any more than she (her Anima more precisely) already had.

“I… Thank you,” she whispered, and closed the water, biting back the urge to cry.

Fuck. She was _not_ going to cry in front of another person’s Anima, that was just beyond pathetic.

Blinking quickly to dispel the unshed tears, she realized a moment later that there yellow and green flames beside her, that there was a warm pressure around her hips, and that the air smelled a bit like dry hay under the sun.

She looked down, and _ho-ly-shit,_ the Anima was _hugging her_.

After her mind was done producing a long-winded, eloquent string of ‘holyshitholyshitholyshit,’ she tentatively lowered her hands until they touched Fiamma’s arm around her low abdomen

Fiamma’s body wasn’t not hard nor soft, it had an indescribable thickness and density and an even more indescribable warmth.

Alex didn’t know if it was because the Anima was a fire Elemental or what, but it gave off a nice subtle heat that was extremely comforting.

As she shifted her right hand to the Anima’s perfectly round head, Alex let her thoughts wander as she regained her composure.

For fear of being discovered as a Vide, she had never took lessons in Anima history that the school offered, nor had she paid attention to readings about Animas that her classmates indulged into. She knew, though, mostly from seeing it everywhere, that Animas didn’t wander more than a few feet from their own humans, at least outside of their homes.

From what she’d gleaned by sneaking peeks here and there, if Animas wandered far from their humans, they’d soon lose all semblance of personality and the less developed ones would soon revert back to look like simple blobs of lights and colors.

However, apparently, Animas could be separated so far away from their human and still retain their personality. And what personality.

The most evident example of a strong personality was that Fiamma could write. It knew the difference between capital and lower case letters, it knew how to use punctuation, and it even introduced itself with its name and the pronunciation.

To have such a developed, stable personality, Maggie must have spoken to it very often. It even remembered its name, which, Alex recalled from her school days, was a difficult feat for Animas to achieve.

When Fiamma, leaned away and smiled at her, Alex felt clam enough to smile back at it.

She felt calm also because she made mental amends with the fact that the choice was out of her hands. Fiamma and her Anima had orchestrated everything, and Fiamma was already here and her Anima was nowhere in sight.

Even with how much Alex resented her Anima for being monstrous and a total freak because hell, Vide here, she sometimes had to admit that her Anima usually kept a clear head and had often tried to help her, especially during her hardcore-drunk-party phase.

“Okay, so. First things first, grocery shopping.”

Either Fiamma was enthusiastic all the time for everything, or it loved the hell out of grocery shopping, because it immediately raised its arm straight above its head, said something or as Alex imagined it, hollered something, and hopped into the bedroom.

When Alex followed it, after having loaded the dishwasher, Fiamma was already digging in her closets and drawers with gusto.

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Alex didn’t look at Animas closely, but she was sure she hadn’t seen such a happy Anima outside of children’s and very old, very still in love couples.

Fiamma was a lovely bundle of joy throughout all of Alex’s commissions around town.

It was happy when Alex waited in line at the ATM, it was happy when Alex went to the post office to retrieve a delayed package, it was happy when Alex went grocery shopping, and it was beyond overjoyed when Alex got hungry and parked by the riverside walk to take a pack of snacks out of her grocery bag and eat right there (sometimes being an independent adult was awesome).

Maybe Maggie had a special person in her life and was constantly thinking about them, because Alex couldn’t believe that Fiamma’s constant happy mood was all her doing. If Maggie truly had such a special person in her life, she couldn’t even summon the energy to be envious. On the contrary, the longer she looked at Fiamma’s smile, the longer she wanted to keep it there.

Lunch was a hurried thing since she needed to be at the DEO by 1330. Fiamma hopped around her apartment joyously, and thankfully it didn’t look sad when Alex burned the incriminating pages of the notepad.

(She kept the one with her name and the one about breakfast though… Because of reasons).

She tried to explain to Fiamma the importance of her job, and thus the importance of not acting out when she was working, because that was distracting, but Fiamma just shaped her claws into a heart and smiled at her through the mirror in the bathroom.

Alex couldn’t believe for the life of hers that she was blushing while brushing her teeth because of an Anima.

The following ten hours were amazing, a constant surprise.

Alex preferred to work out before her lab shift because she felt energized and ready to tackle any alien DNA issue after making as many muscles as possible sing with exertion, so she hummed quietly to herself as she walked to the scheduled sparring sessions, much to the disbelief of nearby agents.

Fiamma floated around her in the locker room, as close as Alex’s Anima usually was. It smiled contentedly enough until she walked into the bare sparring room.

Then, something changed in its demeanor.

It stood motionless beside Alex as the strike team alpha leader announced the first round of sparring pairs.

Its red eyes scanned the other Animas closely, as if it’s ready to tackle them itself. And its smile was gone, its expression had turned stony and serious.

As it had been the case downtown, all the nearby Animas looked at Fiamma with curious or dumbfounded expressions, as if they knew that it shouldn’t have been there, but weren’t sure on the specifics.

Maybe their confusion was bleeding through their humans, because the first agent she sparred with was uncoordinated and clumsy, as if he didn’t take her seriously.

Or maybe it was a man vs woman thing.

Or maybe, more likely, Alex was still feeling pissed about this sudden unplanned exchanges of Animas and she was working her stress out on the other active agents.

After all, she was very familiar with hiding her thirst for violence behind random reasons.

Unfortunately for her, in that instant the alarms went blazing with a call on field for the strike team alpha.

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	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex's (and Fiamma's) first mission as a DEO active field agent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm editing what I have in-between writing PhD research proposals, so the updates don't have a schedule.  
> Thank you all for the amazing kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions and comments. Reading your thoughts about Animas, Alex and Maggie is the best. You all rock.

**Inter-Vide:** _lat_. From:

 **Intĕr** **:** _prep._

Between; among.

And:

 **vĭdĕo** : _vĭdes, vidi, visum, vĭdēre, v. tr. II  
_ To see.

A rare category. Inter-Vide individuals can discern all Animas when these are manifest, however they can also discern non-manifest Animas, even outside their immediate social circle.

According to folklore and modern studies, there is a spectrum of Inter-Vide individuals, according to the scope, the clarity, and the regularity with which Inter-Vides can discern non-manifest Animas.

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It was just Alex’s luck that the first red code the DEO got since she was an active field agent was on the day that her Anima had swapped places with another person’s.

In the van, the other agents’ Animas hovered around Fiamma, staring at her and at Fiamma so attentively that Alex ducked her head and closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of the uneven roads beneath the wheels, and on the muscles in her arm as she clenched and unclenched her fists.

The alpha team vice-captain, Shadow Moon, nudged his knee once against her. She looked at him from between her bangs but he was staring at the floor too, expressionless.

His Anima was a quadruped with multiple sets of curved horns covered in sand. When the Anima moved, the sand would get jostled, disappearing moments before it was supposed to hit the floor. Its hooves looked like they were made of rock, and small boulders were attached to its thin, long tail.

Its golden eyes regarded her calmly, and it didn’t hover like the others. The Anima’s mouth was barely visible, tiny and non-descript. Its chest, covered in gems encased in rock, commanded attention, but Alex dared to peer at its mouth and it wasn’t turned downward, so by its general expression, it didn’t seem to harbor negative feelings towards her.

Then, Moon commented on her having first-mission nerves and Alex didn’t know why, but she immediately sniped back by reassuring Moon that having nerves at his old age was still a thing, don’t worry vice-captain, I’ve got you.

Most of the unit snickered at them before the unit leader snapped at them to shut up.

Moon’s Anima nodded its head at Fiamma slowly, at if the weight of its enormous horns impeded quick movements, sand fell everywhere, but soon disappeared. It seemed content, and Alex was left wondering if Moon’s comment had been good-natured after all.

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The code red involved an alien sighting in a hunting cabin outside of town.

The owner lived in one of the nearby farms. He had been scared half to death by a person who shot acid pellets at him from their mouth and then seemingly disappeared.

Orders were to bring the alien in, where they’d be interrogated, categorized and labelled friend or foe.

As they surveyed the cabin, Fiamma walked alongside her. Alex couldn’t crane her neck to check its expression, that would have looked way too suspicious, but Fiamma’s movements were mindful and alert, almost military-like.

The flaming Anima surveyed the cabin with eerie attentiveness, and Alex found herself instinctively following it around the dusty space. In places the dust rose in thick clouds, clogging her nose and blurring her view.

Suddenly, Fiamma pointed at a spot on the floor and looked back at Alex with a victorious expression. Alex dutifully looked. There was an footprint of the sole of a shoe. She took a picture of it, sent it to HQ for comparison, and a few minutes later agent Moon called out that another agent had found a matching footprint outside, heading towards the desert hills.

She slipped in line with the rest of her unit, in awe with Fiamma’s phenomenal observation skills, and feeling bad at having taken the merit of somebody else’s Anima.

Moon walked beside her and told her she was doing good.

“Could have been any one of us sir,” she grumbled.

He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “But it’s not the first mission for any of us. You have good nerves and good eyes,” he added with an air of finality and Alex had to feign a cough to choke the sound of her snort at the last words.

They found the alien in a small labyrinth of caves in a nearby desert hill, dug by prehistorical floods and the endless force of the wind.

The team walked in a single row, Alex at third place.

The intersections with other tunnels made all the hair on her body stand up straight, but Alex was going to admit that only under threat of bodily harm.

Director Henshaw had repeatedly praised Moon’s nerves during missions, and Moon had just praised hers. That meant she was going to be a damn good field agent, and damn good field agents didn’t get scared by tunnels in the rock.

As soon as she started wondering whether having her own Anima with her would have been better in that situation, Fiamma waved at her from her position, a few paces ahead, and pointed up.

In the roof of the cave they were inspecting there was a hole. It looked big for a slim boy or girl to crawl into, but it curved right after the entrance, so when Alex kneeled a bit to get a look she couldn’t see anything apart from the dark earth.

The team leader reached the entrance of the tunnel then, pointed his assault rifle inside it, while Moon craned his neck with a torch and looked.

“Can’t see much beyond this slope but it looks clear,” he said, while his Anima looked inside of it too, its rocky tail coiled protectively around Moon’s knee.

Much to Alex’s horror, in that moment, without so much as a gesture of warning, Fiamma floated inside the tunnel and for an interminable moment Alex was alone.

Thankfully, it soon floated back to the ground, but her relief was short-lived because Fiamma looked like all hell was about to break loose.

Fiamma locked eyes with her and pointed upward. Moon’s Anima looked at her, but it stood confused by Moon’s side, as every other Anima in the unit. Alex wondered how Fiamma’s personality grew to be so strong that it could regularly separate itself from the human it was accompanying.

But it wasn’t the moment for questions like that. Alex swallowed saliva and raised her fist to call for a stop, making an effort in keeping her breathing steady as she’d learned in training.

Hearing the rest of the row stopping, the team leader turned around, he and his Anima looked confused then pissed off, but before Alex could explain, Fiamma pointed again, vehemently this time, and Alex’s heartbeat spiked and her fingers shook slightly before she curled them more tightly around the stock of the rifle. She was about to swear out loud because she still couldn’t see anything in that goddamn tunnel.

Then, finally, thanks to the reverberating light of their torches, she saw a shadow moving in the hole and she could raise her rifle.

As soon as she rested her cheek against the buttstock of her weapon, the shadow zoomed more clearly in view, a ‘ffp’ sound indicated something fast had sliced the air, and she shot at the edge of the tunnel.

A torch light went out, someone shouted, Alex’s heart was trying to beat its way out of her ribcage. She kept her fingers steady on the trigger and watched out for Fiamma’s movements, as if she would have done if it were her own Anima. Barely stranger’s Anima or not, at that point Fiamma was proving to be as attuned to its surroundings as her Anima had always been.

Several Animas stood directly under the entrance of the tunnel now, but a burst of flames from Fiamma’s belly and back made them jump back. Alex mentally applauded her, since the clutter was distracting to her.

Then, she realized why Fiamma had pushed the others away. Her left hand, resting idly by her side, closed in a fist. Fiamma was staring into the tunnel, her right hand didn’t move, but she closed her left. If Fiamma knew military signals, thought Alex for a moment, that would have been the signal to wait. But that unlikely. Right?

But next, Fiamma pushed all of her four chubby claws outwards, then curled one on itself.

Then, slowly, she curled another claw.

A countdown.

Alex breathed out slowly, tuning out the barked words of her leader, tuning out all the other Animas, everything, and focused only on that clawed hand.

Second to last claw curled on itself.

The last one remained straight for a few seconds… then, slowly-

A shadow moved in the tunnel, a piece of cloth, what appeared like a chin, but she was already shooting.

An pained groan resonated in the hole, and a few drops of blue liquid fell on the ground. It sheened purple in the light of Fiamma’s steady orange flames.

She blinked several times, registering the warm bodies of her team mates around her. Moon’s Anima was by her knees, staring at the tunnel and shaking sand from its horns nervously.

Then she registered their team leader ordering the alien to reveal itself, while Moon, beside her, kept a steady finger on the trigger, and that, inexplicably, calmed her down enough to draw in  a deep breath.

A few seconds later a feeble voice resounded in the cave.

“Please don’t shoot.”

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The next hour was spent trying to convince the alien to come out of the tunnel and come quietly to the DEO with them.

The team leader tried again to get the alien to come down, Alex and Moon had been stationed to remain, with unspoken order to shoot if anything funny happened.

Alex idly wondered about the DNA samples she was going to analyze over the following days, about the alien’s appearance, behavior, voice, movements, diet. Her mind reeled with all the new information she was about to learn, when she realized that she’d shot the alien thanks to Fiamma’s countdown.

A cold shiver ran down her spine.

All the other Animas had seen that. Did they suspect anything? Were they going to talk about it the next time they manifested to their humans?

As if on cue, the team leader’s Anima floated slowly but inevitably towards her, blinking its only eye eerily. Its expression seemed confused and perturbed, and it approached her, Alex thought, as if it suspected something…

But suddenly, Fiamma was no longer under the entrance of the tunnel, but pressed in front of her, and before Alex could even react at the sudden movement, Fiamma head-butted the Anima in an explosion of crimson firework-like flames.

It happened in the blink of an eye. In a second, Fiamma was between her and the Anima, in the next it had stepped forward and head-butted the other, and in the next, the team leader’s Anima shot off into the wall of the cave. The team leader visibly shivered and stuttered at his next request to crawl the fuck out of the tunnel already.

Feigning a cough because of the dust and not burst in laughter was officially on the list of the hardest things Alex had ever done. Right up there with resisting Kara’s puppy eyes when she finished her food early, and fighting her way through a two-hour sparring session with cocky recruits the day she fell on her wrist.

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That night, after having loaded the dishwasher with the final dishes of the day, Alex turned around to find her own mass of darkness perched on its usual spot on the kitchen island, while the chair where Fiamma had been sitting on until a few seconds before was empty.

So the impromptu hug Fiamma had given her earlier was a ‘bye bye,’ she mused, as she blinked at her Anima.

Her Anima stared at her. Alex always knew when it did that, even though it didn’t have visible eyes.

A weird feeling settled in her chest, as if something had lodged itself back in its rightful seat.

She wanted to scream at it, because who the fuck ignored their own Anima most of the time, only to miss it terribly when it was gone for a few hours?

But she lived alone and she was a responsible adult, so she didn’t scream. She asked it several questions, what did you do with Maggie, what did you tell Maggie, etcetera, but of course her Anima remained silent and motionless.

She had long given up the patience to teach it how to write. It wouldn’t even manifest to try and hold the marker for crying out loud!

So she sighed in exasperation, acknowledged the paradox of her emotions, and started talking about her day as she went through her night routine.

She told her Anima about waking up to Fiamma, for some reason she didn’t say anything about Fiamma’s very affectionate demeanor, or about going grocery shopping with her, but she recounted the mission in details.

The adrenaline, the sounds of the gunshots, the way they cuffed the alien with tasering cuffs and dragged him out of the cave.

The way the team leader started snapping at her every few seconds after Fiamma head-butted his Anima into a wall.

Her Anima snickered for a full minute at that, its shadows slithering and shivering all over the place. Alex didn’t stop it because it was honestly very amusing to watch.

She went on recounting the way the team captain kept scowling and sending bursts of electrical shots to the cuffs of the alien, even though there was no reason to, only because he had the switch in his hand and Fiamma had proved itself to be stronger than his Anima. Of course the team leader didn’t know this last bit, but Alex knew it, and she assumed that was why he was pissed off in general. Plus, his Anima kept glaring at her.

She talked about the way Moon stood up from his seat, but how he was too late, she was already halfway across the van. She snatched the switch from the team leader’s hand, and tasered him with her own service-taser (at the low-mid setting, _she_ wasn’t an animal).

She tried to describe, albeit awkwardly, the way the alien in custody had looked at her, the way the other agents had looked at her, the way Moon had looked at her then. His Anima nodded at her and slammed its hooves on the floor of the van, once, sending sand and pebbles everywhere before they disappeared.

Moon then proceeded in taking her weapons and call HQ ahead to report. Meanwhile, the captain had fainted due to the electrical shock. After the hit his Anima had taken, he couldn’t take any more.

Her Anima listened closely as she talked about the arrival at HQ. Director Henshaw and two security teams waited for them. One was for the alien, and the other turned out to be for the still unconscious team leader.

She talked about how Director Henshaw demoted the team leader and booked him a mandatory psych eval, and about the way he promoted two people on the spot, Moon to captain of the strike team alpha, and Alex to vice-captain.

She recounted the way Moon and Director Henshaw had looked at her, the way their Animas had nodded at her, with respect, recognition, and pride in their eyes.

By the time Alex finished her narration, she was in bed, dozing off, and felt an awkward amount of comfort in seeing her Anima settling down for its nightly watch, expanding, expanding over her, until it became the usual blanket of curling shadows and darkness that would put the fear of god in her nightmares.

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	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violent aliens and parking tickets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for graphic description of bloodshed.

**Omne** - **Vide** : _Lat_. From:

 **Omne,** _omnis_ _n. n. III_

the totality.

And:

 **vĭdĕo** : _vĭdes, vidi, visum, vĭdēre, v. tr. II  
_ To see.

An extremely rare category and the most famous one.  
Omne-Vides can discern all Animas, manifested and un-manifested.

There is a spectrum of clarity and scope in the visual ability of Omne-Vides. However, further studies need to be conducted on the matter.

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In the next few weeks, Alex, her Anima and Fiamma settled into a kind of routine.

Every few days, Alex would wake up to joyful flames instead of whirling shadows, to wide red eyes instead of nothingness, to exclamation marks and hugs instead of the shadows settling around her shoulders.

Once she felt a wave of bottomless loneliness, paradoxically it was during Sisters Night, and the moment she blinked, her Anima was perched on her and Fiamma was gone, and she felt immediately better. Another time, Fiamma was leaning on a table in the lab when suddenly it looked startled, blink, and her Anima was on the table and Fiamma was gone.

However this exchange worked, it seemed that Fiamma and her Anima could somehow communicate with one another and know when they needed to swap places, and the swap itself seemed to be instantaneous.

The relative safety of the whole operation made Alex reconsider her opinions against it.

She felt increasingly at ease around Fiamma, but she still felt strangely good as she walked down the parking lot and into the DEO and all the other Animas gave hers wide berth. She found that having all those Animas hovering around her was extremely distracting. Even though she never told Fiamma this fact, it seemed to have gotten the message somehow, because it had taken to head-butting to oblivion the Animas who wandered uncomfortably close to Alex.

Every time it happened, Alex made her point to remember it and thanked Fiamma if they found a moment to themselves.

Although Fiamma could write, Alex never asked about Maggie since it would have been a horrible breach of privacy and her guts twisted painfully just at the thought. Fiamma had reassured her that her Anima wasn’t telling Maggie anything compromising about her, so Alex didn’t feel the need to snoop in where she didn’t have the right to.

She felt awful at not scolding her Anima more about the current arrangement, as she felt like she was part of a big joke on Maggie’s expense. She couldn’t see Animas unless they were manifest, so she didn’t know that the Anima who accompanied her in her daily routine was not her own. But again, Fiamma protested in writing, repeating that it was alright, that Alex didn’t need to worry about that.

Even though Alex never asked about Maggie’s life, the attitude that Fiamma demonstrated at the DEO denoted a trained person. That little piece of information made the lovely woman she’d bumped into at the gym all the more interesting and sometimes Alex fantasized of bumping into her again downtown, in a supermarket, or at the riverside.

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Alex met Maggie again about three weeks after Fiamma and her Anima had started their weird exchange program, and honestly Alex was surprised that it took her so long to bump into the shorter woman again. Maybe she assumed wrong, about Maggie living in the city, maybe she commuted to work.

Anyway, it was just Alex’s luck that it happened on a royally bad day.

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She got called in at the DEO during a phone call with Kara, so she had to hurry a lie to her little sister about a problem in the lab, and had to head out immediately to a ranch near the desert where an hostile alien had been reported.

The drive there went relatively well.

Her team members now knew that she was not one for idle chit-chat, Moon gave the order to protect the family who owned the ranch in whatever way possible and to apprehend the alien effectively without excessive bloodshed, also to protect the two children of the couple of owners.

Alex was thrilled at feeling useful and alive, once more.

Only they arrived to a slaughterhouse.

The reported alien had turned out to be a trafficker. They found him clawing at the scales adorning the ranch owners’ bodies off of their back to sell them to the black market. He kicked and screamed and said that it was within the right of his people to take from corpses, for he swore up and down that they were already gone when he got there. Of course, the blood on the knife-like appendices on his forearms, and the slashes all over the bodies didn’t help his case.

What was, in some measure, worse, was that the ranch owners consisted of an extended family of unreported aliens.

The only survivor consisted in an elderly lady, who had gone to negotiate the pay of their latest hay harvest to the neighboring agrarian company. And the one who reported the alien, the postman who had enough wits about himself to remain hidden under the porch until the soldiers in black creeped along the house’s property.

The elderly lady sobbed in Moon’s arms as they stopped her from entering the premises of the house, saying that they had stumbled on Earth generations ago due to a malfunctioning piece of technology in their home planet. Due to the erratically growing scales on some parts of their bodies, they had set to quietly work the earth and teach themselves what there was to know about language, culture, and some semblance of education.

Sensing her anger, her Anima indicated a spot in-between the alien’s pieces of exoskeleton. She had in inkling that if she were to shot at that spot, the alien would die on his feet, but she bit the inside of her mouth instead and let the other agents sedate him and drag into the tanked van.

The knowledge of that spot became invaluable when, upon arrival at the DEO, the alien tried to make a run for it by trying to stab none other than Director Henshaw’s neck.

Her Anima had been right. All it took was one bullet in that spot and the alien crumpled to the ground.

Director Henshaw found her minutes later in the ladies’ room, trying to hold back the waves of nausea. The trafficker didn’t have to die, she could have shot any other spot. She shouldn’t have shot either, she should have used her taser, she helped design the updated version for fuck’s sake, it would have worked, the alien would have been incapacitated and she wouldn’t have his blood on her hands now.

But the more Henshaw spoke about saving lives, duties and responsibilities, the more her mind recollected in technicolor details the greenish blood of the trafficker and the beautiful scales of the late family members. They looked fascinating and she imagined asking one of the children if they’d shed them, and if they did, if she could have one so she could analyze them and learn about them.

But no, all her memories could drudge up was greenish blood by the DEO parking lot’s exit, and the teal-colored blood covering the bodies and the scales.

It was all such bullshit, Alex thought.

The DEO needed to do something about this, or Alex would go mad before her first year as a field agent wrapped up, she was sure of that.

At the base, she tried to calm herself down in the lab, her Anima snapped at the other lab assistants’ Animas so much that they soon fled somewhere else. She was alone when Director Henshaw ordered to go home.

So she went to the gym and tried to tire herself out with a workout first and spinning class later. Once she drove out of the gym’s parking lot she was so famished that she had to stop near the riverside walk, where she spotted a vendor of snacks and energy drinks.

She technically couldn’t park where she did, but it was right there, 30 seconds walk, if that, and she was willing to defend her case if something came up.

Of course, something did come up, because that was just her luck.

She was walking back to her bike when she saw the police car parked at the other side of the street, and two officers stepping out.

Of fucking course, she thought. She should have expected something like that.

What she didn’t expect was seeing Fiamma and Maggie sliding out of the car.

Alex had always harbored a (secret), err, “appreciation” for women in uniform, but…

God- _damn_.

She went through a couple dozens of escape routes from the situation, since, paradoxically, after fantasizing about stumbling into Maggie again, here she was, getting cold feet. And of course that was the moment when both Fiamma and Maggie noticed her.

Fiamma let out a joyful explosion of flames, raised its arms, waved enthusiastically and said something, while Maggie smirked.

She goddamn _smirked_.

Alex took a few seconds to pray to every human and alien deity that they be kind to her because she was already in a delicate mental state and couldn’t take much more emotional and psychological strain.

Fiamma and her Anima immediately struck up a conversation, perched or leaning on Alex’s bike. The sight shouldn’t have been as endearing as Alex felt it was. Fiamma’s mouth moved at a mile per hour, while Alex’s Anima seemed more content in listening than speaking.

Maggie stopped in front of her bike, too, while the other officer, an Asian-looking woman, walked off in the direction of the food vendor with a greeting nod.

Maggie looked…. She looked nice. Nice, yes. Alex squashed any other mental compliments and tried not to mentally thank the cold weather because Maggie’s service holster was already doing great things to her torso without Alex imagining her without the vest.

Oh, she was so not going there.

Plus, ogling Maggie like a pervert felt awful and disrespectful, so Alex trained her eyes to meet Maggie’s.

Oh god save her from the dimples. She’d forgotten about them.

Maggie had bags under her eyes, where her concealer has been either sweated off or smudged off, but that could have been attributed to the irregular hours at work, and not to exhaustion or sickness, Alex’s doctor mind quickly elaborated. Plus, she looked genuinely happy and not at all exhausted.

Well… maybe a little too happy.

“So… what do I have here?” said Maggie in an almost sing-song tone, her dangerous smirk still in place.

“Bike parked on a no-parking area,” she added.

However, Alex was too overwhelmed by her day to recognize the amused tone in the shorter woman’s voice, so she sighed because, fine, okay, getting fined was an arguably fitting way to end the god-awful day.

“Hey, you okay?” she heard and refocused on Maggie, who looked suddenly concerned.

Maggie’s arms shifted nervously and Alex saw her flexing her fingers as if she wanted to touch. What, Alex’s mind was too fused to realize, so she spared a glance at Fiamma, who was still leaning on the bike but was now looking at her worriedly. Alex was sure she was imagining things, but Fiamma kind of looked like she was _this_ close from manifesting and hugging the shit out of Alex.

Her own Anima perched onto her shoulders, but it extended a trail of shadows to Fiamma and coiled it around her arm, as if it wanted to hold onto Fiamma and draw strength from it.

Alex shook her head, now she was certain she was definitely imagining absurd meanings into the smallest gestures.

“Yeah,” she replied absent-mindedly. “Fine. Just…”

_Just killed an alien on the job today and I feel guilty as fuck about it._

“Long day,” she settled for.

Although there was something in Maggie’s demeanor and personality that made Alex feel like she could share something more with her, but it was still only the second time they’d met.

Maggie looked in her eyes searchingly, but a moment later she leaned back, and didn’t ask for a clarification. Alex appreciated that she understood so quickly that that was all she was going to get.

Her hands made another aborted movement, and this time she jammed them into the front pockets of her police vests.

Again, the gesture shouldn’t have appeared endearing. Maybe it was herself who had accumulated some exhaustion, she mused. Or maybe her mind needed to hold onto something in order not to think about the day she’d had so far, and the way in which Maggie looked in her uniform, like she was born to be a cop, was probably as good a distraction as anything else. Yes, that had to be it.

The movement also brought her eyes to Maggie’s name label.

“Sawyer,” she tried. “Officer Sawyer.”

She let the sounds roll of her tongue.

“Y-Yep,” replied Maggie with an unusual stilted tone. “Here to serve and protect.”

Serve and protect, she though, as she looked into Maggie’s dark chocolate eyes. She wondered if she had done that properly, shooting that alien without even aiming at a non-lethal spot.

Serve and protect. Now she understood why Fiamma was familiar with guns and investigations. Suddenly, she felt a trickle of excitement at the newly realized knowledge that Maggie had also had military-like training. For a moment, her mind went wild with possible scenarios. Shooting ranges, talks about guns and holsters and anything related, rants about uneven shift hours and quirky colleagues.

To distract herself from her wandering thoughts, she opened the trunk to get her ID and license. She was feeling the beginning of a headache making a nest in her temples, might as well get that fine and get home to rest.

“‘Officer Sawyer.’ I should have known you were a cop, what with you trying to so hard to do things by the book and show me your license back at the gym,” she said, ignoring Maggie’s strange look and Fiamma’s excited jumps.

For reasons unfathomable to Alex, Maggie frowned at Alex’s license. She saw Fiamma asking her Anima something, and after a second Maggie said:

“Um, ‘Alex Danvers.’ Okay. Is this a fair-is-fair thing because you know my name now?”

What.

“What?”

“Well, I mean, nice picture here by the way, the short hair suits you but the longer hair was okay t-“

“Sawyer, this is for the ticket. For the parking spot.”

Maybe Maggie was also having a long day, Alex supposed, but she got confused by the way both Maggie and Fiamma stared at her in disbelief before the first looked apologetic and the second seemed to burst into laughter.

“No, shit, sorry I thought you got it. That was a joke. We stopped by to get some food. I’m not going to write you a ticket for a minute of misplaced parking because you were hungry, geez. Don’t worry about that.”

Alex turned around and truly enough the other officer was talking with a couple of mothers with toddlers running around on the grass. The slim woman occasionally drank from one of the iced teas that the food stand offered.

Alex looked back at Maggie’s apologetic smile and felt the heat trickling up her cheeks.

Fuck. What a day.

Now she even made a complete idiot out of herself in front of Maggie. She needed a 10-hours long nap. Badly.

“Sorry about that, Danvers. It was a shitty joke.”

Alex felt so mortified that she couldn’t even fully appreciate the way her surname sounded in Maggie’s raucous voice.

“No, it’s…” _my fault for being stupid,_ she thought, but the inner feminist in her suddenly scolded her for apologizing uselessly, so she inclined her chin to the side to take a long-awaited sip of her energy drink.

“Long day?” prompted Maggie with a kind smile.

She nodded, smiling despite her tiredness, and stuffed the Gatorade and the toast in the trunk of her bike.

“How about we meet up in three hours? We can grab dinner, my treat of course.”

Maggie’s hopeful, soft expression and easy-going body language, and also Fiamma’s joyful waving, pulled another smile from her without even realizing.

It didn’t make sense to Alex. She still didn’t know Maggie, but it was easy to be around her, too easy, but she was nonetheless grateful to the shorter woman for whatever magic she was working on her.

But…

“Sorry, I have an early dinner with my sister and then I’m turning early. My boss wants me in early tomorrow to…”

_Run me through a psychological evaluation because I’ve killed an alien today._

“…discuss my work.”

She settled on her bike and watched, from her corners of her eyes, as her Anima and Fiamma spoke to each other again. If her Anima had told Fiamma anything about what happened that day, she was going to be supremely pissed.

“Messed up anything?” Maggie asked, a mix of curiosity and concern lacing her expression.

Alex lazily thought about Maggie’s loved ones. If she was that concerned for a near strange, how did Maggie react around her loved ones? Whoever Maggie called family and friends were very lucky people.

“No, just did my job.”

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	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex's feelings are in turmoil and she copes with them by cyber-stalking Maggie's records.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a somewhat depressing alone quality time.  
> Should have done this earlier, but please take note that the rating has been upgraded from Teen and Up Audiences to Mature.  
> Sergeant Voight is from Chicago PD (2014-). I love that series.  
> Thank you for the feedback, it means a lot to me. If you have any thoughts/opinions/questions, please don't hesitate to jot down some words.

**Mănĭfestum** , _manifesti_ , _n. n. II._

_A proved phenomenon; an inequivocal proof; something evident, indisputable._

Original Latin term to indicate the manifestation of Animas. Manifest Animas are tangible, visible and audible across multiple levels of the Vide and Audite categories of humans.

All categories of Animas lose their ability to walk or fly through objects or human beings when manifest. The movement of manifest Animas depends on their category. Most Animas in the  Informis (shapeless) category can float. Animas in the Bestia (beast) category can fly or reach high heights according to their form. Most Animas in the Gens (Humanoid) category walk on two legs.

The manifestation of Animas is connected to a series of social rules, most of them pivoting on privacy.

The manifestation of Animas occurs according to the Anima’s own will. However, in cases of psychological or physical traumas, sickness, or danger, Animas may manifest as an instinctive reaction to the perceived emotions of their human.

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A couple of hours later, Alex listened to Kara’s stories about her workplace (she was the one who always talked about her work since Alex couldn’t for obvious reasons).

This nice colleague, guy named Winn, sounded fifty shades in puppy love with Kara, but of course Kara, actual ball of perpetual sunshine Kara, was completely oblivious to it.

Alex swallowed her steak and salad, drunk her lemonade, and tried not to think about the person who’d developed a crush on Kara, but had chosen to keep everything bottled up inside in order to bask a little more in her friendship.

Her heart ached in solidarity with that particular avoidance strategy, and she felt angry at Kara in Winn’s stead, even though it was just an excuse for her own anger about her own feelings about Maggie. Maggie was lovely and witty, but Alex needed to grip on herself and squash the bud of the crush that she was starting to grow about the shorter woman, or else it would have been Vicky all over again.

Her emotion reverberated to her Anima because it bristled and lashed out with tendrils of shadows, but as usual it couldn’t even touch Kara’s Anima.

Kara had dubbed her Anima Sunspear, and for convenience’s sake they called him ‘he.’ He was a gigantic lion made of sunlight and gems, and his mane contained all the colors known to mankind, and many colors that Alex’s mere puny human mind couldn’t even begin to process.

Alex had seen this scene unfold often enough, especially when her resentment for Eliza’s treatment got the better of her. Kara frowned at her food, possibly sensing her Anima’s discomfort at being assaulted out of the blue, and all the other Animas in the diner and even outside, on the sidewalk, were cowering in fear of the confrontation. A few were so terrified that they couldn’t keep their quadruped or humanoid form anymore, and morphed back into shapeless balls of colors or reflections of colors. Many people shuddered in fear and looked around themselves, uneasy and confused in their seats.

Alex knew that if she forced her emotions back, her Anima would have become even more unstable, so she chewed her food and lazily watched Sunspear’s mane. It was not lost on her, that many colors in those soft folds of otherworldly fur were dark and menacing and looked a lot like Alex’s worst nightmares.

It said a lot about her sister and her powers.

As usual, Alex sipped her drink and kept quiet. Some things were best left unspoken.

Kara would have never gone dark, Alex knew her. It would have taken an external threat for her to even think about insulting somebody. And when that external threat appeared, Alex had licenses for a dozen types of human firearms, and she had created a prototype for an alien gun.

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To put the awful day behind herself and shed some stress, Alex tried to watch porn.

She tried, she really did. She had a bottle of wine opened and ready to help her, her phone muted, no alarms or notifications, she’s had a quick shower and she was on her bed.

As usual her Anima had bristled uneasily when she opened the website and it slunk off to the day area.

Alex understood why her Anima was so uneasy around anything sexual. She didn’t like sex, but she wasn’t in a pub with sweaty, smelly hands all over her, a tongue pocking out of pushy lips, ready to tackle her tongue into submission. She was by herself, in her quiet apartment, with some innocent softcore porn.

 _I can do this,_ she thought, staring at the screen stubbornly.

Twenty minutes later she pushed her closed laptop away. She couldn’t do it.

The videos were all bad, she told herself. They were too fabricated, you could see a mile away that the women were not enjoying themselves and her inner feminist screamed at her to take the gun and shoot everybody who’d ever forced a woman to have sex with them.

But that was the frustration talking, she was familiar with it. She huffed and tried to reason with herself. Maybe some actresses did it for fun, what the fuck did Alex know about porn industry. Absolutely nothing.

She laid in bed, a bit hot all over, and a tiny bit wet. As if sensing that its human had done trying to force herself into enjoying porn, her Anima floated back into the room.

Thank goodness, she thought, she never felt safe in touching herself unless her Anima was close to her. Was that a Vide thing?

Pushing that thought out of her head, she caressed her breasts, pinches her nipples, slowly and relentlessly, again and again, sliding her hand down between her legs, folding her arm back to her breasts. Slowly, she riled herself up enough that her fingers could slide in fairly easily with some twisting.

She tried to think about an imaginary partner to help herself along since she didn’t have all day.

Her Anima extended its shadows over her like a cupola. Even though its eyes weren’t visible, Alex was sure that it was looking outside, at the pale moon. The moon was as thin as a nail, but still beautiful, and Alex watched it through the veil of darkness of her Anima’s body until the heat consumed her limbs.

A tingly, perfect sensation shot up her spine, down to her toes, up again to the back of her head. She shook with the force of it, because she still hadn’t learned to be still during an orgasm. She muffled a groan because she found it humiliating to be in any way vocal when she was by herself, and she breathed and counted between her breaths as sounds and colors came back to life. The hum of her drying machine, the hubbub of the traffic down on the street, the slowly spiraling darkness of her Anima.

She stared at nothing, wondering, because she was always a bit uncertain, at first, before her mind fully came back online, whether she’d truly managed to come. She always needed to work herself up quite a bit, and she always felt like she was missing something. She felt like she was doing it wrong, and when she rubbed her hand in her sheet, she had to admit to herself that yes, it was coated with come.

She spared a thought for the piece of velvet cloth that she’d bought years ago just for such occasions because laundry was a pain already without changing bed sheet every so often. Not that she did that very often…

The life of a bachelor. She wondered if sex was always like that for people. Convincing oneself that they’d truly come, and worrying about the linens.

Well, no point thinking about sex with partners. Her life was too fucked up for that. There was nobody out there who could handle a relationship with her without screaming bloody murder within the first month. She worked a dangerous, highly classified job, she was full of nightmares, resentment, repressed anger, self-doubt and self-hate, as her Anima so splendidly represented. She had no patience when the mood struck, an unholy love for weapons and sparring matches, and a Kryptonian little sister.

And that was not counting in the cluster-fuck that it was being a Vide. She still had no idea what wrongs did she do in another life to be born like that, and later to have grown up only to keep other people at a distance, apart from that unholy obsession that she’d harbored for Vicky.

She knew that hating her Anima for any of that was stupid, because her Anima was only the manifestation of her soul, but god was it convenient to have anybody to lash out to when the world sucked.

The hum of the drying machine finished. She sighed as her Anima morphed back into a shivering mass of darkness.

She padded into the bathroom for a shower and to get her clothes out of the drier.

Go to work, kill an alien. Make an ass out of herself with the sweetest woman she’d met. Try to watch porn and fail. Masturbate anyway.

Just another day in the life of Alex Danvers.

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When she crossed the threshold to her bedroom, her Anima disappeared and Fiamma appeared on her bed.

Alex’s initial happiness at seeing her friend was crushed the moment she saw the state that Fiamma was in. Its body was blue-purple, and timid, pale blue-green flames swayed on its limbs.

She approached the bed, unsure on what to do. Fiamma looked at her, didn’t wave, didn’t smile, then ducked down its head, closes its eyes, and its flames died out until only its body remained.

“Fiamma…” called Alex, her voice clogged by her speeding heartbeat.

She had no idea what to do, she was completely out of her element.

Fiamma didn’t seem to be listening, so she sat on the bed as quietly as possible. She raised a shaking hand to touch the Anima.

“Fiamma, what’s going on? Are you okay? Is Maggie okay?”

She was starting to get scared, but she touched Fiamma’s body anyway, and after a moment she ventured into hugging it. The usually warm, joyful Anima felt cool to the touch and remained motionless as Alex close her arms around its round, wide torso.

“It’s alright. I’m here with you. I’ve got you. It will be alright,” she kept on whispering, closing her eyes in order not to see those god-awful hues of green, blue and purple.

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Alex knew that her Anima had gotten back during the night because 1) she didn’t have any nightmares and 2) she was tucked in bed the way her Anima did when she’d got home drunk, or when she’d try to power through a sickness, or when she’d fall asleep at her desk the day before an exam.

She sat up groggily in bed, silenced her alarm, and tried to recall as much as possible, but to no avail. She didn’t remember when Fiamma got home and was replaced by her Anima, nor she remembered how Fiamma was when it disappeared. Was it feeling any better now?

It had been such a shock, seeing Fiamma like that, and Alex swore to herself to be nosy and ask Maggie what was wrong the next time she’d bump into the policewoman. If there was any way in which she could help, she wanted to do so.

She eyed the way her blanket was ducked neatly around her legs. It was undoubtedly her Anima’s workmanship, she confirmed, snickering softly at the way she was wrapped in the blankets like a burrito.

She winced as she recalled the dark days in which she’d decided to give her mother’s morals the middle finger and threw herself into every party on campus, almost daily.

As she’d stumble home, her Anima would manifest and strip her and help her to bed.

They were the only times when her Anima manifest. Despite being seemingly made of incorporeal darkness, its wisps of shadows, the core of the shadows more precisely, were tangible. Her Anima’s body felt dry and crisp like bedsheet laid to dry on a hot summer day and its touch would sooth her skin, damp with sweat and spilled drinks.

She saw a wisp of shadows to her left and true enough, her Anima was resting on the bedside drawer, staring at her.

She almost never wished that she could hear her Anima because she didn’t like the majority of her thoughts, and she was afraid of hearing a parroted version of them, or whatever it was that Animas said to their humans.

Plus, before Alex dedicated herself to science, she blamed her Anima for having been born as a Vide, as absurd as that was, so she was sure that she suddenly grew into the ability to hear her Anima, it would shower her in insults all the time.

Part of her, a strong one, thought that she deserved it.

“Good morning,” she said simply, sliding out of bed.

“Do you think Fiamma’s feeling better right now?” she regretted her words immediately. First she’d thought about how useless it would have been to talk to her Anima, and now here she was, striking up useless conversations.

She didn’t even know when it was the last time that she spoke to it like this.

“Do you even know what happened yesterday?” she mused out loud, and she told her Anima what had happened, the state in which Fiamma was, while going through her morning routine.

“How does you exchange with Fiamma even work? How do you know when to switch with one another? Is this one of the things I should have researched instead of avoiding all things Animas like a coward? Probably.”

Great, now she was answering herself. Come on, time to hide her god-awful bags with makeup, put some clothes on and hit the gym.

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That afternoon, after her psych eval, Alex stalked Maggie’s records with the DEO servers.

It was the only way to call it, it was pure and simple stalking, but she couldn’t help it, she was too curious. When her search went through, her Anima leaned over her shoulder to read, too.

Sawyer, Margarita.

One year her junior.

Moved from Blue Springs, Nebraska to the police academy of New Orleans right after graduation.

Excellent marks in all her psych evals and shooting drills.

Firearm training cleared for all standard service handguns.

Entered the National City Police Department seven months before.

Moved from the 21st, to the 77th to the 92nd precinct. If Alex remembered correctly, they were progressively tougher, busier precincts.

Then Alex read something interesting.

An application for training and clearance to use service assault rifles, an application for letters of recommendation to become a junior detective, and a third application to enter the science division of the NCPD Intelligence unit as said junior detective.

Huh.

She didn’t even know that the NCPD Intelligence unit had separate divisions.

A few minutes of research later, Alex found a report from the head of the Intelligence, Sergeant Voight, about the increase in the crimes committed by aliens, or supposedly committed by aliens, and about the uncertainty within the NCPD in handling such cases.

Sergeant Voight ended his report with a firm statement to the administration, a request to put together an inter-departmental task force specifically to handle alien-related cases, together with an ominous vision of chaos on the streets of the peripheral neighborhoods in the near future.

Alex immediately thought that such a task force was a great idea. It could have been something similar to the DEO, but on a more day-by-day basis.

Sergeant Voight’s report was five months old. Hopefully, some gears in the city administrative mechanism had started to move.

Alex dug deeper in Maggie’s records, trying to understand why she’d applied for the new division.

Turned out, she seemed to be something of an alien-whisperer.

Almost all of her reports mentioned aliens somehow. They were friends of victims, they were witnesses, they were victims, they were perpetrators. She had several connections and informants in the alien community, assumed Alex. And she berated her colleagues, and even subtly berated her superiors, for not being prepared to handle one of the biggest alien communities after the one in Metropolis.

In one report she went as far as stating that the National City alien community was being increasingly more violent because many alien criminals had been chased out of Metropolis due to the constant vigilance of Superman, and had joined the nearest big community, the one in National City.

Alex’s heart gave a stutter of admiration and excitement at Maggie’s strong calls for more inclusive measures in the politics of the police force.

For days on end, she often wondered about what it would be like, working on joint cases with Maggie, and whenever she thought about possible scenarios, her Anima always shuddered in excitement.

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	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diners and late-night calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a quick filler scene about Alex's growing feelings and Maggie being a supportive cupcake, then influenza happened.  
> Still self-edited.  
> Thank you for all the encouragements, you're all wonderful people. I love this fandom.

**Nihil-Audite** : _Lat._ From:

 **nĭhĭl** : _nihil, nullius rei, pr. ind_  

Nothing.

And:

 **audĭo** : _audis, audii, auditum, audīre_ ; _v. tr. IV._  
To hear.

The second rarest category known to humankind after Nihil-Vide.

Nihil-Audites cannot hear the voice of Animas in any capacity, including their own, even if these are manifest.

Ipse-Audite individuals can become Nihil-Audites in the aftermath of immunodeficiency diseases and psychological traumas. Therapy and treatment can restore the auditory sense of a Nihil-Audite person in time.

The rate of success in treating born Nihil-Audites is close to zero.

.

.

.

Over the course of the next month, Fiamma swapped places with her Anima seven times.

It usually stayed until Alex went to bed, except for rare cases where it simply disappeared and in the blink of an eye, in its spot, her own Anima would appear instead.

She was sick with worry every time the Animas swapped places, but she kept her eyes on the news and she stalked the hospital records from time to time and Maggie never got hospitalized, so maybe whatever prompted these swaps wasn’t danger and the consequences weren’t as dire as she’d supposed.

Sometimes, mostly in the late evening, Fiamma appeared in her Anima’s stead, its joyful orange and red flames down to dejected teal and blue hues.

During these times Fiamma just sat somewhere, dejected and staring at nothing. It never moved, or even attempted at communicating, it barely even made eye contact.

Every time Alex cuddled the flaming Anima and worried sick about Maggie, while chanting her litany of useless reassurances to a nearly catatonic Anima.

.

.

.

Meanwhile, life at the DEO continued as usual.

Oftentimes Director Henshaw passed by the lab and inquired after her projects, delegated odd administrative jobs to her, or asked her opinions about strategic operations.

Odd jobs included overseeing the non-active agents’ sparring sessions, analyzing DNA samples collected by other organizations, asking her opinion about patterns in the behavior and movements of certain alien species, even find, read and write a summary report of the newest articles about alien sightings around the city.

If felt like the Director was building up her skill set for something, but she couldn’t fathom for what and he was uncooperative in letting anything spill during their interactions.

One cold windy afternoon found her sitting in a diner, continuing her research on aliens.

She scrolled through the results of her latest Google search.

The classified article she’d read mentioned alien activities downtown, by the 21st and Queen Street, so now it was time to find some bloggers and vloggers from the area and get a visual of this insect-like alien.

Kara had just texted her about going out with Winn for dinner to bond over the walking nightmare that was their boss (hopefully she was going to get the hint this time), so she was left with the choice of gathering her things and go home and order in, or stay in the pub and order something.

At that thought, her stomach helpfully quipped in with its decision. Never let it be said that her stomach was shy about expressing its opinions, especially in a crowded pub.

With her cheeks on fire, Alex decided it was time to call a waitress or a waiter, when she heard a familiar voice,

“You do know that they serve food in here, right?”

She looked up and there was Maggie, in plain clothes, her arms crossed in front of her and a playful smile on her lips. Fiamma was loosely hugged to its human’s leg, waving joyfully as usual.

Alex wondered if something happened at work to make Fiamma stick so close to Maggie and she stood up to greet the shorter woman, but also to check her for wounds and the sort.

She didn’t notice any visible injuries, though, and their Animas started chatting happily away.

“Yeah, my sister bailed on me so I guess I’ll order something,” she said, looking around for a clerk.

“Um, well, you can totally tell me to piss off-“

Maggie’s tentative tone made Alex refocus on her.

“-but, if you want, I can keep you company. I owe you an apology anyway.”

Maggie’s dimples should have been registered as weapons, honestly. Alex didn’t need the incentive, she was going to say ‘yes’ the moment Maggie said ‘I can keep you.’

“Absolutely. And you don’t owe me anything. Here, I’ll hang your jacket next to mine, you tackle someone into giving you menus, okay?”

“Copy that,” said Maggie snickering.

.

.

.

Talking with Maggie came as easily as it did the first time they’d met. The shorter woman was sarcastic and fun to talk with.

They sat on the opposite sides of the table, off-center, to leave room for their Animas, as was customary.

Alex knew that the habit wasn’t always necessary, but obviously she couldn’t say why.

In reality, many Animas liked to huddle as close to their humans as possible, and many had a form that was so unstable that they mostly went about their day as simple floating spheres of lights and colors.

Fiamma sat beside Maggie, letting the swirling pattern of flames on its cheek rest on the tabletop, and since the table surface was lucid resin, Alex could see the reflections of red and orange dance on the table, which made her smile for a second before she schooled her expression back to normal.

Sometimes Fiamma said something and Alex’s Anima sometimes answered back. Her Anima seemed to have relaxed since Maggie and Fiamma had approached them, because it wasn’t so large a cloud anymore, letting its shadows spiraling menacingly as to keep the other nearby Animas away. It sat on Alex’s shoulders as usual, and it answered Fiamma in bits and pieces as it kept surveying the pub.

Once the food arrived they started talking about simple topics, last night’s baseball game, best pitchers, the resemblance of a pitcher to an actor switched off to movies, then singers.

Maggie sounded like she wanted to hate country music but she secretly loved it, while Alex wiped away the words ‘punk phase’ from her mind as she narrated her current vintage rock craze.

As Maggie slid their bottle of soda away to check the contents of the bread basket, the bottle bumped lightly into Alex’s notebook and it blinked to life, with an Instagram post from a few months ago depicting a blurry but inevitably alien figure disappearing into a side alley into the outskirts of National City.

“Huh,” said Maggie when she saw the screen.

Fiamma, of course, was completely unfazed, and kept resting on the table, whereas Maggie turned with a clear question mark in her expression.

Alex waited for the questions, but Maggie just scrutinized her, looking at her as if she’d never seen her before. Oh god, wasn’t Maggie possibly thinking that she was an alien, was she?

“It’s for a project,” she said, and realized that she wanted to lie as little as possible to this woman, to Maggie.

Maggie who’d offered her dinner after an innocent joke made at the wrong time, who smiled at her easily and openly, and who met her snarky remark for snarky remark, never backing down.

And also, well, this was the woman whose Anima she sometimes cuddled to sleep, so she already felt like she could trust her, but Fiamma’s antics were an anomaly. No other Anima had ever got close to her own, let alone swapped places with her Anima and went grocery shopping with her.

“My boss gave me an assignment.” She said. “I have to look for unregistered types of alien and report about their behavioral patterns. I’m cross-referencing articles and blogs.”

“Huh. That sounds like a….an interesting job, at the least. What do you do?”

At Maggie’s direct question, her Anima defensively coiled itself tighter against her, probably sensing Alex’s reluctance at lying.

Fiamma must have sensed something too, because it raised its head and looked at Alex curiously.

As Alex tried not to reciprocate Fiamma’s stare but also trying to avoid looking at Maggie too, she fidgeted and stuttered, and saw Fiamma saying something and her Anima replying. In that moment, Alex had to remind herself that being a Vide was a nightmare enough, but sometimes, like at the present time, she wished she were an Audite too, so she could take advice and direction in the words of Animas.

In front of her, Maggie extended her hand across the table, fingers splayed. A placating gesture.

“It’s alright, shouldn’t have asked. Don’t worry.”

But she shook her head because it was glimpses like that – of a forgiving and supportive person – that made Alex want to be honest and open up to Maggie.

It was as if their budding friendship was a tiny flame of care and safety across an icy wasteland, and Alex wanted to curl around the flame and keep it safe from the wind and the elements. She wanted to nurture it, to see the smoldering flame grow into an encompassing inferno that could light up her days in this new, foreign, chaotic city. But more so, she was selfish, and she wanted that flaming friendship to anchor her in a job that slowly threatening to seep more and more under her skin, hardening her, turning her into that same icy wasteland that she wanted to fight against.

“No, it’s a perfectly normal question.” She finally said. “I just… don’t get spooked, but I..” she looked up to Maggie’s eyes, looking for strength there, in dark chocolate with specks of gold, reflections of the artificial lights of the locale. Maggie’s expression was alive with emotions that Alex wanted to catalogue meticulously.

“My job’s about researching aliens, but I’m sorry, I really can’t talk about it.”

“It’s okay, it’s hot stuff, I understand. We don’t have to mention it anymore-“

“Well, I do call it lab research when I’m with my sister..” interrupted Alex, because she did wanted to finally have somebody to talk about her job with, even if it was just the scientific part.

Her quip made stopped Maggie short for a few seconds though.

“O-kay. You can’t speak of it even to a family member. That sounds classified level stuff.”

She masked her uneasiness behind a shrugs, half filled with dread and half with joy that Maggie had had assumed correctly so quickly.

Fiamma said something as it turned her head back to the surface of the table, and her Anima answered as she picked up her club-sandwich.

“Yeah, well, thank goodness my sister’s a bit of a chatterbox so…” she said, but she regretted her words immediately, pathetic as they sounded, and let her voice trail into silence.

She stalled by taking a big bite and Maggie followed her cue, sipping her soda and looking at the strolling wave of people outside.

A minute later, Maggie asked:

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Her expression revealed no ill-intentions, no sly feelings. Maggie looked at her as if she was simply curious to know more about her work.

Alex swallowed with some difficulty and wondered if her lack of friends in National City made her extra susceptible now to small, everyday acts of kindness, such as asking a tentative friend about their work. This was normal behavior, she reminded herself, no need to feel like bursting out of her own skin just because she had the opportunity to talk a bit about her work with somebody else.

Sensing her jumbled emotions, her Anima let its shadows spiral faster around her shoulders, and once her peripheral vision was covered in shadows, she felt ready.

She talked about her work at the DEO for the first time.

Of course she let out the training, the missions, and the sparring, but she found that the more she spilled little things about her lab work, the more she started to regard all the classified elements in her work from another perspective.

Instead of saying how she got promoted to vice-team leader, she said that one of her superiors went crazy in his anti-aliens rants and she shut him up, which earned her the respect of many of her colleagues.

Instead of talking about her missions, and especially about the killing, she narrated how she was hard-pressed to make difficult decisions. She made them and she didn’t regret them, that wasn’t her style in the line of work, but it wasn’t easy to live with them.

Maggie nodded and her expression became clouded with memories, and Alex cursed her tongue. Maggie was a petty officer, she was down in the streets every day, she must have made her share of hard-pressed decisions.

So she reverted to talking about how interesting researching aliens was, how she wanted to understand them to find a way in which they could be regulated by human laws.

Having ~~stalked~~ read about Maggie before, it was an obvious bait, but she didn’t feel too bad about it, since Maggie jumped at the topic energetically.

Maggie’s opinions about the integration of aliens in National City and surroundings town was of a more pacifist nature than Alex was used to, having been trained by the DEO, and under its principles, for nearly three years now.

As much as Alex avoided talking about classified stuff, the DEO mindset of ‘let’s check if they’re hostile first but let’s also keep a finger on the trigger just in case’ must have shined through her words, because Maggie wound back to the topic several times during the rest of their dinner.

Alex always met her straight ahead, and thanked her reckless words for having broached the topic at all. She couldn’t talk about these things with anybody else, not even with Kara, because Kara lived in a perfect place in which every alien was pure as snow and all criminals had already been locked away in a far-removed place.

Whereas Maggie even had plans for re-integrating petty criminal aliens in society after their sentence; something that Alex had wondered about during her DEO training, but never heard of within the organization.

When they noticed that most of the patrons in the diner were gone, they paid and got up, and that was when Alex noticed that Fiamma and her Anima had been talking very sporadically in comparison to the constant chatter of their other two meetings.

Was that a bad sign? That was definitely bad, right?

Maybe Fiamma and her Anima found out that they couldn’t be good friends after all. Alex felt a shiver of dread at that notion, and her stomach twisted painfully at the thought of the smoldering fire of her friendship with Maggie dying out so quickly.

Just as her heart was starting to pound faster in apprehension, her Anima dropped off of her shoulders and perched on Fiamma’s shoulder, or at least, on the expanse of body that connected Fiamma’s round head with its round torso, and basically shivered in relaxation there.

Alex didn’t realize that she sighed in relief until Maggie asked her what was wrong.

“No, nothing. Just…”

_Just glad that our Animas are still friends now that we got to talk without any weird circumstances between us._

“Thoughts,” she supplied, lamely.

Maggie smiled, shrugging her coat on, and sent a text message quickly with a frowning expression that made her worry.

“Sawyer?”

Maggie snapped out of it with a light shake of her head and led them outside, where she rummaged through her bag for a tiny notepad and a pen.

“Hey, you didn’t mention it so you probably don’t want or need my help, but just to let you know, if you need it, you got it.”

And Alex was presented with a piece of a paper and a phone number on it, and her traitorous mind suddenly wondered, if she were more public about her… inclination,  would this how she would hook up with women? A fortuitous encounter in a dinner, an exchange of viewpoints and interests, a phone number.

She was too busy beating her stupid imagination to death, because what the fuck brains, her inclination had no place in her mind when she was with Maggie.

Maggie was her friend, she’d probably got a boyfriend or at least dozens of interested men among her acquaintances.

As she tried to chase her wild thought though, her silence stretched on, and Maggie must have taken it for a request of clarification, because she added:

“For your research, you know, about aliens-“

“No no, yes, this is… great, thanks. Thank you, I forgot to ask. I’ll call you. I mean, if I need anything, I’ll text you-“

_God please strike me with thunder right here right now._

Alex kept her eyes resolutely down as she input Maggie’s number in her phone and texted her.

She tried to ignore Fiamma, who was standing on the side, between her and Maggie, swaying back and forth on its clawed, stump-like feet, smiling at her. Her own Anima climbed lazily from Fiamma’s shoulders and floated equally lazily up to Alex’s.

Maggie watched the text appear on her phone and nearly dropped it in surprise.

“Oh, shit. Have to meet my girlfriend in five, gotta run Danvers.”

Maggie looked so apologetic that it startled Alex into a momentary stupor and before she realized what was happening, she’d said her ‘thank you for the company let’s do this again sometime’ routine, and Maggie was being swallowed by the busy urban traffic.

Then Alex finally realized that she was staring at the traffic, in useless search of a glimpse of Maggie’s back like a needy moron or something, and turned around.

She took her time typing Maggie’s contact and tried not to let her mind go rampant, but it was way too late because she stood outside the diner for ten solid minutes scrolling up and down her sparse ongoing chats aimlessly and all her mind could process was the way Maggie sounded when she said the word ‘girlfriend.’

Surely she meant a girl…friend.

Right?

A friend who is a girl or who identifies as a girl. Or a woman. Or whatever.

Right?

Right.

That had to be it.

…

A girlfriend.

 _Girl_ friend.

.

.

.

Alex kept close watch to Fiamma that night, because Fiamma did come back to hers a little more than an hour later.

The softly flaming Anima sat gloomily and teal-colored on the couch next to Alex, not even trying to watch the episode that Alex was trying to distract it with.

She tried not to think about what could have possibly prompted Fiamma to come by that night.

Maggie was with… her… girlfriend… Wasn’t that supposed to be a happy time?

But Fiamma’s mood was telling about Maggie’s relationship with her girlfriend, and Alex was going half out of her mind with worry already, and they weren’t even half an hour in the night.

Maybe Maggie and the mystery woman weren’t exactly partners? Maybe they weren’t anything serious. But Maggie wouldn’t have called her her girlfriend if that was the case.

When Fiamma turned blue beside her Alex said fuck it, and opened her chat app to Maggie’s number.

She typed:

_Thanks again for the company today. Didn’t have a chance to tell you, but it was the first time I could talk with somebody about my work since I’ve moved here. So thank you for listening to me ranting about aliens. Good night._

She watched Fiamma leaning on her shoulder with an absent look in its eyes and swallowed her indecision.

She tapped to send the message and settled back down on the couch.

If Maggie read the message now or in the morning, it wasn’t important. As long as Maggie felt just a little bit better upon reading it, that was more than enough.

For now, she would cuddle Fiamma on the couch and pray that everything would be alright soon for her new friend.

She was so fucking relieved when, after a few minutes, Fiamma turned a bit green and yellow. She didn’t care if Maggie saw the message or not, she was just glad that she felt a bit better.

Which explained why she jumped five feet in the air when her phone vibrated with a call from none other than Maggie herself.

“Hello,” she replied so quickly that she wondered whether Maggie got the whole word.

She heard a watery chuckle from the other end and Alex’s heart lurched in her chest.

“Hey Danvers.”

“Sorry about the late hour, were you asleep? I thought you’d read the message in the morning,” she said, but quickly stopped speaking and mentally berated herself for the nervousness clearly audible in her voice.

It made Maggie chuckle again, although mirthlessly, so Alex didn’t exactly count her rambling as a total fiasco.

“It’s fine, I’m not even in bed. I should though. Gotta clock in in five hours.”

“Yikes, that sucks. I’m sorry. Can’t sleep?” she asked, observing Fiamma’s slow yellowish flickering flames.

“Honestly? I’ve had a fight with my girlfriend,” murmured Maggie.

 _I know, Fiamma looks like shit, and I have no idea to make it better for you two,_ she thought, but didn’t say.

“I’m so sorry Maggie. Do you want to talk about it?”

The other woman was quiet for a few seconds, but there was no sound of crying or sniffling, so she waited.

“Thank you… I… Too soon, you know?”

Maggie’s voice was small and uncertain and Alex hated the cause of it instinctively.

Whatever this fight with this girlfriend involved, Alex wanted it gone as soon as possible. That tone didn’t belong with Maggie’s voice.

Her mind worked a mile per hour as she searched for a safe topic that didn’t involve aliens, since they’d talked so much about them already.

Her academic strive (inherited by her parents’ obsession towards personal achievements and knowledge) caused her to become a recluse after her decision to keep Kara safe, back in high school.

She didn’t know many conversation starters for topics outside of work-related stuff and she’d already talked with Maggie about inconsequential things such as sports and music.

An idea blossomed in her mind then, one that she could play off as a random curiosity.

“Absolutely. Don’t worry. You know, I used to read my father’s magazines about guns, and I forgot to ask what guns you guys have in service at the NCPD.”

After an interminable second, Maggie began to speak with a sliver of passion in her voice and Alex repressed a sigh of relief.

They talked about 9mm and 25mm service handguns, about gun training for police officers, service holsters and competition holsters, and systems of rating at the shooting range.

As they talked, Fiamma’s body turned from yellow to orange, and the Anima’s eyes focused on Alex’s apartment, on the night sky outside, and it leaned back on the couch, letting its warm head rest on Alex’s shoulder.

Alex didn’t know for how long they talked.

At some point she dozed off and before she let her phone slip from her semi-limp fingers, she heard a distant voice saying “Thank you Alex,” and she had the strange impulse to tell the voice that it was alright, that everything was going to be alright.

.

.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex brings Maggie breakfast at work.   
> It's as stalker-ish as it sounds, but against a certain flaming Anima's smile, resistance is futile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments, kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions. You're all wonderful!

**Ipse-Audite:** _Lat_. From:

**Ipse:** _ipsa, ipsum, pr. def_.

_In conjunction with pronouns (ego ipse, tu ipse, etc):_ one self.

And:

**audĭo** : _audis, audii, auditum, audīre_ ; _v. tr. IV._  
To hear.

The second most common category of human beings across all countries and time period, after the Ipse-Vide category.

Ipse-Audites can hear all Animas only when these are manifest, but can also, in rare circumstances, hear their own Animas when these are not manifest.

Ipse-Audite individuals can lose their hearing and become Nihil-Audites in the aftermath of immunodeficiency diseases and psychological traumas. Therapy and treatment can restore the auditory sense of a Nihil-Audite person in time.

.

.

.

Alex woke up in her bed to Fiamma’s red, slow but steady wisps of flames.

On her chest was Fiamma itself, its round warm head resting comfortably on the blanket above her right breast.

Without jostling Fiamma as much as possible, she silenced her alarm clock and if she snatched a couple more minutes in bed to allow herself some warm cuddly time with Fiamma, well, nobody had to know.

Her shift started at 1600 and she settled to do some laundry and online shopping, but at 0930 she was dragged out of her apartment by an insisting flaming Anima.

She was guided into one of the best coffee shops in town, and got revered and prayed to until she fake-sighed and bought an unholy quantity of espresso, and salty scones.

It was when Fiamma led her to the precinct that she finally zoned in on the plan.

During their walk to the precinct, Fiamma was increasingly happier, but as the building got on sight it was absolutely, and literally, an inferno of excitement.

At the entrance, she shot ahead of Alex in a bursting cloud of flames, and a second later, her Anima floated through a nearby wall.

It looked at Alex expectantly, as if asking her what the hell was she waiting for, but they were in a police station and Alex was a visitor, so first of all she presented herself to the reception for a visitor badge.

When the desk attendant said that she needed to page Maggie for confirmation, Alex’s rational mind knew that it was protocol, but that didn’t stop her from being disappointed on behalf of Fiamma’s surprise being ruined. Even though she was a simple marionette in the surprise coffee run, she’d quickly warmed to the idea of offering Maggie a chance to cheer up after the previous day’s morose events.

Her Anima sensed her emotion and slapped a whip of shadows at the desk attendant’s Anima, who was already huddled in the far corner of the booth, poor thing, and now it visibly shrunk from a kind of sloth-like bear covered in sand to a sandy-colored teddy bear.

“Okay, alright. Surprise coffee it is. I think she needs it today.” The attendant repressed a shiver even though it wasn’t cold indoors.

“Why? What happened?”

“Eh, let’s just say Sawyer doesn’t do well with partners.”

.

.

.

Her Anima kept a helpful wisp of shadows pointed towards Maggie’s location, but Alex thought it more prudent to stall a bit, asking a couple more cops for directions to the archive room.

A common misdirection technique picked up at the DEO that eased nobody’s mind but her own.

Or maybe she just wanted the extra minute to steel herself before meeting Maggie. For all she wanted to alleviate her pain, she was also popping up unannounced at work like a total creepy stalker.

She was too weak to Fiamma’s smile, damn it.

When she walked into the dust-smelling archive room, Fiamma was chatting happily about something, leaning over the desk where Maggie was shuffling looming mountains of paperwork.

Maggie didn’t wear the vest that time, and the service shirt complimented well her curvy torso. She also let her hair fall to the side, so the left side of her neck and her cute little ear were completely exposed. Not that Alex was paying any attention to Maggie’s looks or anything. She totally didn’t notice the bags under Maggie’s eyes, and the defeated way in which she hunched her shoulders. And she totally didn’t feel the urge to press her palm between Maggie’s shoulder-blades and massage the stress out of her.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Maggie looked up and saw her, and the look of pure shock on Maggie’s face made her chuckle, also because Fiamma started to happily jump on the spot, sending a burst of firework-like explosions in the dusty air every time she touched the ground.

Alex easily ignored the usual display of joy, glad to see Fiamma back to its usual self, and idly wondered what it was saying as she greeted Maggie.

“Hey. I don’t know how much you’ve slept tonight, but I reckon not much, so here you-“

She was interrupted as soon she laid down the coffee and the food in front of a still shocked Maggie, because Fiamma barreled itself into her and squeezed her into a hug.

Unfortunately, Fiamma’s affectionate hugs had become pretty much regular occurrences when they were alone, so she didn’t jump up in surprise and almost laid her hand on Fiamma’s arm, when finally, the rational part of her brain kicked in and she raised her hands so quickly her wrists hurt for a second.

_Shit_!

Shocked by the sight of her Anima manifesting in front of another person and even hugging this near stranger, Maggie slapped her hands on the desk as she shot upright, blushing furiously and gaping for a moment before her voice finally found its way through her mouth.

“Fiamma!” she hissed scathingly, but the flaming Anima didn’t budge, just squeezed her tighter.

Alex felt her skin heat too, not from the blush, but from the fact that Maggie had just watched her own Anima hug another person out of the blue, which was fifty shades of what the fuck.

Suddenly, she remembered the social etiquette.

“I’m so sorry!” she rushed to say, hoping that it wasn’t too late.

It was customary to always, always apologize when in the presence of a stranger’s or a friend’s manifest Anima. Only family members and lovers were supposed to know what the other’s Anima looked like. Even if it was nobody else’s decision but the Anima’s to manifest, one was always supposed to apologize for intruding.

She hoped her stupefied look was enough to make her pass for somebody who was very, very shocked at the sight of a manifest Anima.

What a surprise.

Totally exceptional occurrence right there.

Maggie sighed in exasperation and waved a hand at her. She looked like she was about to speak, but Fiamma turned around.

Alex steeled her gaze resolutely straight ahead, not daring to look down at the Anima still clutching her hips. Fiamma must have said somebody because Maggie focused on it and frowned.

“Fiamma!” she chided so vehemently that Alex felt bad for the poor thing.

“I can’t hear what it’s saying!” Maggie scoffed dejectedly at her hurried words, so Alex insisted. “I swear Sawyer. I’m a non-Audite, I can’t hear any Anima’s voice. Not even my own.”

It was an embarrassing truth to share, but she had to say it.

For all that Alex had avoided all things Animas from her early childhood, she got the impression that it was ridiculous not to hear one’s own Anima. She gleaned on this fact in the whispers and gossips of her school mates. She wasn’t just a freak because she was a Vide, she was a double freak because she was a Vide and a non-Audite.

She’d never tell anyone this fact either, at least not outside of her immediate family members, but she wanted to come clean with Maggie, for the sake of their budding friendship. For the sake of having somebody in this foreign, impersonal city who knew some truths about her.

Maggie scrutinized her, brows furrowed cutely, as Fiamma spoke again, for a long while by the looks of it, also making Alex’s Anima reply shortly.

Fiamma talked watching her, watching Maggie, watching Alex’s Anima, and when Alex realized that it was talking in the open like that to show Maggie that she truly couldn’t hear anything, she felt her heart melt with affection and fierce protectiveness towards the bundle of flames and claws and fangs.

It was nice having somebody here to support her, a trustworthy backup, a partner.

She watched as Maggie looked from her, to Fiamma, to her again, until her shoulders slumped a bit.

“Oh.”

It was impossible to determine what emotions lay underneath that single syllable, so Alex shook the thought out of her mind.

She took a step back because at this point the only most likely thing Maggie cared about was what everybody cared about regarding manifest Animas, that is, to have a quiet moment alone to convince their own Animas to stop manifesting so that the awkward situation would end.

This was the first time Alex was in the presence of somebody else’s declared manifest Anima outside of her family members, and even though she was no expert on Anima matters, she knew the drill. Everybody knew the drill.

“I’ll wait outside while you convince it to… stop. Okay? Okay,” she said, and quickly slinked out of the archive room before Maggie could say two words.

She quickly and quietly closed the door behind her and leaned on the nearby wall, blowing out a slow breath.

A moment later, Maggie’s voice carried through the rickety door and she took a few steps into the empty, dusty corridor in order not to eavesdrop, jamming her hands in her jacket’s pockets to avoid fiddling with her visitor badge.

God, she felt like a student outside of the principal’s office.

She knew she needed to be careful now and act on Maggie’s body language cues to see if Fiamma would be manifest or not when the door opened again.

She wondered for how long Fiamma had been manifest before it hugged her, or if it manifested in that exact moment.

If Maggie asked about that, and she surely was going to ask, Alex needed to have a believable reply at the ready.

But before she could formulate anything, Maggie opened the door, looking exasperated with a joyfully waving, flaming Anima in tow.

“It’s alright. When she gets like this, there’s no convincing her. Come on in. And thanks for coffee. You’re a life-saver, not even joking.”

Before she could retort, Maggie turned around and walked back to the paperwork-covered desk, leaving Alex to step back into the room slowly, filing off Fiamma’s pronoun into the ever-growing mental file about the flaming Anima.

She scrutinized Maggie carefully to check if the shorter woman was speaking out of a sense of duty or if she truly didn’t mind.

By the barely muffled moan that escaped Maggie’s throat when she snatched a scone from the cardboard tray and stuffed it into her mouth, she truly didn’t seem to care that much.

“If you’re sure. I’ll walk out the second you ask me though, alright? It’s absolutely fine.” She wanted to confirm as she resumed her seat.

Maggie finished devouring her scone and fighting against her own pornographic sound effects, while Fiamma leaned over her and let her head rest on Maggie’s hair, smiling at Alex all the while.

“Thanks again for the surprise. And for not, ya know, freaking out about Fiamma’s appearance.” She pointed at her Anima with a bob of her head.

“Why would I be freaked out about her appearance?” She’d seen way, way worse, starting from her own Anima actually.

“Um…” Maggie stared at her in disbelief. “Are you joking or for real?”

“Why would I be joking? Sorry to break your thunder Sawyer, but she’s not that scary.”

“No, I meant the fact that she’s a Humanoid and an Elemental.”

Alex browsed through her memories to comprehend the hidden meaning of the sentence.

She knew that Humanoid Animas were the rarest, and from what she saw, it was rarer for Animas to maintain their humanoid form for long periods of time.

Elemental Animas were pretty common though, most Beast type Animas were Elemental, and even a few Shapeless type ones were.

Maybe the combination of the Humanoid and Elemental categories was very rare and she’d never understood the gravity of it?

This was one of the rare times when she regretted ignoring every whispered conversation or lecture about Animas after all the string of tortured Vide antagonists in her childhood readings.

But honestly, who could blame her? She was so spooked of her own ability as a child that she decided to remain as blissfully ignorant as possible. In-depth knowledge about Animas was only relevant in real-life if one wanted to become, say, a lecturer in an Anima Studies department or something.

“I’ve never paid attention to Anima lectures in school, and the books and movies about Animas never interested me much...” she admitted.

_I have enough of them during my day to day life…_ she thought.

“I know that the Humanoid category is rare though. But I still don’t see how I should have ‘freaked out’ because of Fiamma.’”

As their Animas began to converse, Maggie scrutinized her before she ate another scone, nearly closing her eyes in bliss. Alex averted her eyes, rubbed her palms on her jeans and tried to think about boring, dull things.

“It’s weird for me to say this, I thought it was common knowledge, but Humanoid Elemental Animas are considered freaky because it means that you have a… how to say, such a close relationship with your Anima that your Anima develops a different personality than yours and some people think that that leads to an excessive compartmentalization.

This is some shit from Freud. I think it went, Id-Ego-SuperEgo-Anima, and if you connect the Id to the Anima too often it stays in Humanoid form, and that’s bad ‘cause then the Anima develops different thoughts and feelings from yours. Animas are their own beings to an extent, even the most underdeveloped ones, they’re similar to us, they represent ourselves.

But the gap widens the more we interact with them, right? And there are bad examples of that in history. Like, you know, some Reich generals trying to say that their Animas told them to obey to the orders that they had reservations about. That kind of stuff.”

Alex fought the urge to say that she hadn’t heard so much Anima history since her classmates made fun of her for skipping those seminars back in high school.

Maggie’s interest in the subject partially explained why Fiamma had such a developed personality.

In lieu of saying that, though, she opted for:

“That’s bullshit.”

Which made Maggie throw back her head and laugh, which in turn made her feel awfully pleased with herself.

The force of Maggie’s movement shove Fiamma off of her, but after jumping in joy and saying something she settled down and crouched beside the desk, between the two women, resting her head on a pile of files in Alex’s direction.

It was what Fiamma usually did at the lab on the days she swapped places with her Anima, and the familiarity of the gesture grounded her somewhat.

“Honestly. I’m no expert on Anima matters but that sounds like actual bullshit.”

Maggie snickered into her paper cup of coffee, her eye scrunched cutely in mirth. After her sip, she set the cup down and licked the corners of her mouth and Alex quickly averted her gaze away again and ignored Fiamma’s suspiciously smug expression.

“Yeah. Animas are part of us and whatever bullshit those theorists want to spit won’t change it.”

Maggie nodded absent-mindedly at her own words, reassuring herself of them, and absent-mindedly moved the mouse of the nearby computer to revive the screen.

“Hey, quick question, and you can also tell me to back off anytime, but your… lack of interest in Animas, is it because you can’t hear what yours says?”

“And thank goodness I can’t,” she spat out instinctively, ignoring the way Maggie stiffened before her, or the way Fiamma stopped talking to her Anima and straightened herself to look at her.

An uncomfortable silence fell in the dusty, smelly archive room and Alex let out a slow breath, trying to reign in her temper.

“I don’t think my Anima and I would be on speaking terms even if I could understand it.”

It was weird to talk about her Anima with somebody other than Kara, even in such a small capacity.

_My Anima looks like somebody’s worst nightmare and that’s telling about my personality, I guess._

_My Anima is excited when I think violent thoughts and it creeps me the fuck out._

_My Anima scares any other Anima in sight and is the only one I’ve ever seen that is only just a mass of endless blackness and what more obvious way for the universe to tell me what a freak I am, right?_

“My Anima…” _represents all my stupid freaky feelings that ruined my friendship with Vicky and any other subsequent friendly interaction with any other human being._

“Hey.”

Maggie’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts, but more so it was seeing a brown-colored hand, palm up, in front of her on the desk.

Maggie had extended a friendly hand to her, literally, and even though she wasn’t ready to take it, she wasn’t comfortable with human contact outside of her sister (and due to the alien nature of her sister that meant all of human contact), even though she kept her hands firmly in the gap between her thighs, that single hand grounded her and sparked a breath-taking wave of gratefulness in her.

“Sorry...” she started, looking up at Maggie, but Maggie was quick in raising her hands to stop her, and smiled.

“No prob. Wanna hear why I got buried in paperwork? It’s kind of a romp.”

Kind of a romp turns out to be a terrible story about a racist and xeno-phobic police officer who substituted Maggie’s usual partner. That morning the man tried to humiliate a black mom and her alien adopted kid by having them step outside their car during a routine check and trying to make the kid change the color of his hair due to his slight chameleonic abilities.

Thank goodness Maggie realized his plan early on and reported him, almost socking him in the jaw when his remarked got out of hand.

After having accompanied her kid to school, the mother had kindly driven all around town to look for Maggie’s precinct and vouch for her.

“Really? That was so thoughtful of her!”

“It was. Got me all moved when I heard she stormed into the chief’s office and demanded my partner’s ass on a silver plate. Well, my substitute partner’s ass. Taek is good police. Nothing to complain about. But this guy… I have no idea how he even got into the force in the first place.”

“Good riddance.”

“Amen.”

They grinned at each other, Fiamma looking at them smugly.

Suddenly a man stepped into the room with no more than the rickety handle to announce him.

His eyes skimmed over Fiamma’s flames, unseeing, so Alex assumed she stopped manifesting the moment the door opened.

Ascertaining whether she will manifest again once the man’s gone will be tricky.

As the man’s eyes inspected her she instinctively angled her chest just so to make her visitor badge more visible.

The man was middle aged, balding prematurely, he had a bit of a pot-belly, a thick neck, and a fat-bellied, ice-blue and wood-brown pigeon-like Anima accompanied him.

The detective and Maggie exchanged greetings good-naturedly, and he dropped off a couple of files for her to revise about a possible alien connection on a case, dropping hints about the fact that she did a good job in smacking her partner down that morning.

“Substitute partner. I feel like I’m badmouthing Taek every time people call him that.”

As the detective moved to walk out of the door, still grinning, the poor, good-natured asshole had to go and ruin the day:

“Lovely to finally meet your girlfriend, Sawyer. The hubby will be jealous I got to meet her first!”

Maggie sputtering in reaction did nothing to silence the sudden hammering of Alex’s heartbeat.

Alex felt her face turn into stone as she cursed, loudly, in her mind.

Why the fuck did that man need to go and say such stupid things? Alex was perfectly fine with keeping every thought about Maggie in that sense well enough alone, after she’d learned about Maggie’s sexuality.

But suddenly she was back in a suburbia bedroom lit only by moonlight, watching tendrils of shadows curling around Vicky’s curves without her permission, acting on her baser instincts and drives.

Even before she could wrap her mind around her emotions, her Anima had tried to pull Vicky in in its freaky darkness.

But she was careful now.

Never getting close enough to anybody to call them friends. Certainly never entertaining any sorts of thoughts about any woman she’d met.

She wasn’t going to involve any part of Maggie with her freaky feelings.

She was a borderline sociopath.

Her Anima was an indistinct, shivering pool of darkness and she killed an alien in cold blood when she was pointed out its weak point. She didn’t even think about incapacitating it first, for fuck’s sake.

And now the man had to go and imply that anything between her and Maggie was even remotely possible, as if she wasn’t having enough trouble trying to keep that line of thoughts out of her mind.

It was too much.

She needed to get away from Maggie.

She couldn’t risk staining Maggie with her spiraling feelings, with her darkness.

“I’m not,” she snapped, pushing herself out of the chair and keeping her gaze low as she muttered a ‘bye Sawyer’ on her way out.

Her Anima snapped her shadows at the detective’s bird-Anima, and both man and bird recoiled from her path.

She kept one foot in front of the other, ignoring Fiamma as she floated beside her in the empty dusty corridor, looking concerned, and she wickedly relished in the way her Anima snapped a shadow at her, too.

Fiamma recoiled back, and stopped following her.

The same happened in the rest of the building on their way out, and on the street, all the way home.

Most of the times she hated that the fact that she was a sociopath and that it reflected on her Anima.

But sometimes she loved it.

.

.

.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new task force is in town!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter more Chicago PD characters make their entry. Please welcome them warmly, as I love writing them and they will make repeated appearances throughout the resemblance of a plot that I'm concocting.  
> As usual, this is self-edited and I might miss typos even if I've read the chapter repeatedly. Feel free to point out any mistakes/inconsistencies/irregularities/anything.
> 
> Thank you for the patience, and thank you for the support, you're the best.

**Intĕr-Audite:** _Lat_. From:

 **Intĕr:** _prep._

Between, among.

And:

 **audĭo** : _audis, audii, auditum, audīre_ ; _v. tr. IV._  
To hear.

.

A rare category.

Inter-Audite individuals can always hear all Animas only when these are manifest, but can also, irregularly, hear their own Animas when these are not manifest.

Moreover, Inter-Audites can hear the un-manifest Animas of the individuals closest to them, including family members, friends, and lovers.

According to folklore, there is a spectrum of Inter-Audite individuals. The spectrum varies based on the scope, the clarity, and the regularity with which Inter-Audites can hear the un-manifest Animas.

.

.

.

 

“Agent Danvers.”

“Sir.”

She took off her lab goggles and focused on Director Henshaw, as usual trying to ignore his floating Anima who was always scrutinizing her, or so Alex thought.

The Anima had a large swooping kind of hat that covered the area where Alex assumed its eyes where. She knew it was focused on her, though, because the front of its face, with the huge golden and shining pattern, was turned towards her, and its horns were also slightly inclined towards her, too.

Alex deeply admired Director Henshaw for two reasons. One, he was a shapeshifting alien at the helm of an anti-alien black ops organization (his Anima was completely different from the pictures Alex saw of the Director dating a few years back). And that alone took major balls. And second, Henshaw’s Anima was one of the most daring ones in terms of keeping a close distance from her own Anima. So double balls.

“How’s the analysis on the sample found in Wicksand’s farm?”

“I’ve found something weird, sir.”

As expected, Henshaw understood her tone and stepped back to lock the door. He turned, and re-focused on her.

“The alien substances sampled on the scene belonged to the murdered family, to the trafficker, but also to a third alien species. Or at least I think it’s alien because the substance shows an incredibly high concentration of Aeron.”

“The trace that manifested Animas leave.”

Alex nodded.

The biological knowledge she possessed about Animas extended as far as the single, mandatory class she’d had to take in college. Even with what little knowledge she had, she knew that the Aeron concentration was iffy.

“Its condensation is what made possible for the substance to be seen by the naked human eye in the first place. It’s unlike anything ever found on Earth, and it doesn’t match any database, human or alien. It must be alien though because the level of condensation of the Aeron is exceptionally high. I’ve contacted an expert in Seoul and she thought I was joking because a visible patch of Aegon hasn’t been registered until the development of the scientific method.”

Henshaw looked at her as if he was in front of a formidable puzzle but also with that calmness with which he looked at his most trusted agents. He seemed to see inside her until he was reassured by her determination to find out the truth.

“Great job, Danvers. Any thoughts on how to proceed about this?”

Moments like that prevented Alex from investigating into the body-swapping of the late Hank Henshaw.

The ex-Director of the DEO had been infamous for never asking the opinion of a subordinate, and had been even more infamous for his dismissal of women recruits.

“We need to check if the Drascoth trafficker is connected to the Aeron element even if nothing was found on him on particular. A through background check wouldn’t hurt. And in case it falls flat and there’s an alien out there whose powers involve Anima, we need to link it to other cases to see if we missed something. The cases of the NCPD too. If this isn’t a new player in town, we can find a match, a connection between the victims.”

The Director nodded throughout Alex’s words, and regarded her silently, sided by his Anima. Her own Anima was perched on her shoulders, tense and on the defensive, unused to the staring.

“I’ve been passed a report by the superintendent of National City. Sergeant Voight of the NCPD Intelligence Unit means to detach their Science Division, repurpose it, really, into a special task-force that specializes in alien cases.”

Alex’s heart immediately rammed up but she schooled her breathing to remain slow and kept her eyes locked with the Director’s. She knew that he appreciated when people didn’t shy away from him, even if he could behave awfully shy at times, and not meet a person’s eyes at all.

It wasn’t happening then, the Director was silently asking her to step into the ring and meet him head-on.

“I have the power to tell the superintendent that this unit sounds like bad news and that will shut the project down for years. But I wanted your opinion before I say mine. What do _you_ think of this task force?”

“Are you asking me as the older sister of a Kryptonian refugee, sir?” She needed to know. Even though the option that that was indeed the case made her sick to her stomach.

Henshaw looked taken aback for a second, before he crossed his hands behind his back, straightened his spine.

“Actually that didn’t cross my mind, agent Danvers. I’m asking you as an alien biologist and DEO operative whose morals regarding aliens proved to be strong enough to take down a superior agent in front of an armed group of peers.”

Alex still felt her blood boil at the memory. Thank goodness that psycho had been locked away faster than a certain Kryptonian of hers could to the nearest diner when she was hungry.

“Then, sir, I think an NCPD unit specialized in alien cases would be extremely beneficial to us. They could handle everything from street-level mugging to crowd-funding to human-alien relations.

As for assaults or murder cases, they could be equipped fairly well with some investments on our part, and handle some of those cases, too. Especially those involving civilians.

We could handle high-profile cases involving ambassadors, dignitaries, ministers, and so on. Public figures that aliens would attack in potential terrorist attacks. We could give our numbers and equipment support for cases with multiple hostiles, such as hostage situations-“

“Like a SWAT team.”

“Exactly. We could leave the NCPD to deal with the crowd to retain a modicum of secrecy. They would take credit for most of the work, but…” she stammered, not wanting to be too irreverent. “I mean… we are still a _secret_ branch of the military… right, sir?”

“We are,” nodded the Director with a hint of a smile.

He puckered his mouth in thought as Alex ransacked her brain to think about any other remark. She didn’t want to appear childishly enthusiastic about the new task force, but she also thought that Maggie’s dream-team- err, Sergeant Voight’s project – had its merits.

“You thought about all that in the few seconds it took you to answer?”

This time Alex struggled very much to keep her breathing steady, and she may have failed for the first hitched breath, but she hoped that the Director hadn’t noticed.

If he did, he didn’t let it to show on his face.

“I don’t want to know this time,” he said patiently. “But next time-“

“Yes, sir,” Alex was quick to add, mortified as if she were still standing in front of her mother, looking at an A-, or at one of Kara’s Cs.

“No need to look like that, Danvers. You’re a good agent, one of the best I’ve had in years, but I need and want to be informed about what’s going on around here.”

She swallowed at the understanding, soft tone of the man (alien), and thanked every deity that the shapeshifter was a good....whatever his species was, if even he was a _he._

“Yes, sir.”

 _Thank you for trusting me._ She thought, but didn’t say.

The Director walked out, but his Anima paused and tilted its enormous hat-like head upwards, and Alex saw it had one eye sculpted into the golden pattern that constituted its features.

It stared at her Anima, perched on her shoulders and undoubtedly the staring was reciprocated.

A second later though, the Anima simply floated through the glass wall of the panel, following its alien.

.

.

.

The following five days were a flurry of activity.

A cold case of a missing person was opened again because a young recruit from the IT department, named Vasquez, pinged a connection with an alien suspect.

There was also a bust in a meth-lab supervised by a slightly psychic alien that turned out to be a human being who used relaxants in the air conditioning of his lab on the unsuspecting workers/slaves.

The highlight of the week was an invitation from Maggie to have breakfast together, as a thank you to Alex for having brought her breakfast at work.

They met up at a diner Alex had no knowledge of, and still after having being greeted by the door by a rainbow flag, she didn’t zone in on the fact that it was a queer-managed diner until she saw three homosexual couples at three different booths.

National City wasn’t as a metropolis like, you know, Metropolis, or Gotham, but it had its share of queer people. The percentage of queer people in that diner was still more than Alex had ever seen outside of last year’s Gay Pride march.

She had a hunch that Maggie was testing her, to check if she was a homophobic. It was only natural, after the stupid exaggerated reaction she had at the precinct. She often thought about that moment and every time she had to fight the urge to bang her head against the nearest solid surface because that wasn’t her.

That wasn’t normal for her.

Everybody could hit it with anybody else as long as all the people involved in the relationship were of legal age and fully knew what they were getting into.

It just that the detective had to imply something that she wasn’t comfortable with, and Maggie was right there in front of her, and she’d just seen Fiamma hugging her, and she’d just revealed one of the most embarrassing secrets she had, that she couldn’t hear Animas, and… It had been a mix of unfortunate circumstances.

Thus she did her best to concentrate on listening to Maggie’s narration of how work was going, and of how she felt hopeful about her being promoted to detective in the near future.

Alex felt truly happy for Maggie’s company, she could see how much the woman loved it, felt proud and combative about it, and she loved the way Fiamma gloated at her human’s words and the way in which he flaming Anima was trying to coax hers into a conversation.

But she felt uncomfortable in the diner. She felt as if she was constantly observed, and measured, and tested against a standard that she knew nothing about.

It wasn’t a hostile sensation, but it made her feel foreign and strange in her own body, in her own mind. She felt as if her skin was wrong, as if somebody could see in her mind and see the tumultuous self-doubt and self-loathing in there.

Worst of all, she felt as if everybody could see her Anima and distrusted her because of it.

In tune with her state of mind as usual, her Anima was tense as a violin chord during the whole ordeal.

It had wrapped itself around her shoulders so tightly that its shadows darkened her peripheral vision. Its tendrils of shadows shivered and quivered in time with her breaths, and it should have been creepy, it should have made anybody panic, but she often drew comfort by the rythymical black curves pulsing from behind her head.

The tendrils of shadows in the corners of her eyes too should have made her uneasy, she liked having as clear a vision of her surroundings as possible, but now she felt protected and not alone, and mentally thanked her Anima for the backup.

Her Anima never answered Fiamma’s attempts at conversation, keeping a resolute and tense silence that dimmed Fiamma’s joyful disposition bit by bit throughout the meal.

Alex didn’t have the strength to feel bad about her because she felt as if her Anima’s whole focus was to protect her from the other patrons as much as possible, and if it would talk to Fiamma, some of that focus would be lost, and everybody could have ended up seeing how fucked up Alex was.

Alex knew that it was all in her head, that nobody in the diner was actively out to get her, but she still internally panicked every time she thought about her Anima sliding off her shoulders or dividing its attention to chat with Fiamma.

The only time Alex’s Anima talked was when they exited the diner, exchanging goodbyes and have a nice days by their bikes.

She saw the familiar wisp of shadows trail towards Fiamma’s direction, and whatever her Anima said, it made Fiamma look like a deer caught in headlights.

Alex hoped that her Anima gave Fiamma some kind of warning on trying to steer Maggie away from such diners in the future, somehow, at least when she invited Alex out.

She mentally resolved to sit down and explain all this to Fiamma sometime in the future.

Alex liked the queer community. She admired queer people, she just didn’t know how the hell they could be so happy and comfortable in their own skin, knowing that the eyes of society considered them unnatural, abominations.

Alex knew something about abominations. Some Animas were fucking creepy, not to mention her own.

But she didn’t understand how the Animas of out-and-proud people could be so well-settled, so happy, ever so joyful.

Queer couples were even more puzzling, with their Animas jumping around together and having the time of their lives together.

All that joy, all that pride, just reminded Alex that she could never feel like that. She was too much of a coward to do anything other than some uncomfortable sex with strangers picked up at night clubs.

She didn’t want to know what the morning after was like. She didn’t want to know how comfortable she could feel in somebody’s arms. She didn’t want to even begin to dream about what falling in love with a person could possibly feel.

She wasn’t a person who loved normally. She ignored most people and she was uncomfortable with sex until one person came around, one friend, and she would feel like she could lay down her life for that person alone. It was scary, it was too dependent, needy, obsessive, and possessive.

The sight of her Anima’s shadows trailing after Vicky’s curves had been enough to show her that her heart loved in the wrong way. One day they were friends, and the next she fantasized about Vicky naked in bed with her, and had built whole scenarios of happily-ever-after. It had been like every other human being was inconsequential, only that person remained.

It had been so fucking scary she avoided making friends altogether now. It was a testament to how lovely she was (but didn’t admit to herself) in National City that she latched onto Maggie’s friendliness.

She had no idea whether her disposition was queer or not, and she didn’t want to find out. Wanting somebody in that way felt too much like ripping one part of oneself and offering it blindly to the other person. No, thank you. She was going to leave that to people who could deal with rejection and abandonment. She wasn’t as proud and foolish to trick herself into thinking that she could.

She wanted to be left alone with her uncomfortable, unsatisfying attempts of have sex with men and her solitary self-love sessions. It was better that way for anybody involved.

And of course all this didn’t even count the fact that any long-term partner would have discovered her secret. Alex absolutely didn’t want to test the theory whether her partner’s love could be stronger than the fear of Vides.

She was better off not knowing.

She exchanged final byes with Maggie and hopped on her motorcycle.

Only when she rode outside the city into the desert, did she feel her Anima’s loosen its hold on her, and she could finally start to breathe on her own.

.

.

.

A couple of days later after the tense breakfast with Maggie, she drove into the city at top speed, searching for the van where Director Henshaw and alpha team leader Johnson were, but to no avail.

She swallowed down her frustration and told herself that the sample analysis that she salvaged from one of the lab assistants had been more important than the appointment at NCPD HQ.

Whatever Director Henshaw was doing there, it had probably something to do with the new task force, but the meeting was likely to be the first of a long series of meetings over which Henshaw, the superintendent of the city, and the Sergeant chief of the Intelligence Unit were to decide how to organize the new squad.

When she realized that she was going to run late, she’d texted agent Johnson, who drove with Henshaw, and he texted back that salvaging the sample and avoiding a contamination with unknown alien substances was her top priority.

When she arrived at NCPD HQ, Alex told herself that she was buzzing with excitement because of the wild ride, not because she knew what was going in that conference room on the fourth floor.

She was greeted by two agents from the alpha and beta team, positioned by the elevator of the parking lot.

Out of the elevator, she stepped into the corridor of the fourth floor to find an extremely spooked agent Vasquez pacing up and down the length of the hallway. Her scaly, dinosaur-like Anima was making its steel scales vibrate and it was saying something, either trying to calm down its human and/or working itself up into a frenzy.

Alex was surprised to see a couple of short wisps of shadows come from her Anima. Whatever it said, it calmed down Vasquez’s Anima considerably, and the young woman looked at Alex’s arrival as if she were the messiah himself.

“Director Henshaw just told me to come with him, I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” she whispered at Alex’s question about what was going on.

Vasquez kept herself still now that she was in the presence of a superior in rank, but her voice resounded with nervousness and her gaze was twitchy and slightly unfocused.

“He does that sometimes. Don’t worry, it’s probably just a review report with the superintendent or the NCPD Intelligence.”

She tried to keep her body language as relaxed as possible as she spoke, hoping that Vasquez would take the subconscious cue from her and relax a bit, too.

Her scaly Anima looked at her with thankfulness and hopped on the spot a bit, saying something, while the same look, although muted by her nerves, lit up Vasquez’s rigid expression.

“Thanks ma’am.”

“I told you not to call me ma’am in casual settings. Relax.”

Vasquez’s small smile was infectious, and Moon appeared from the door of the room at the end of the corridor.

“Oh good, you’re here. Come in.”

Vasquez shot her another nervous look before she stepped forward, and Alex couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous, too. She assumed she and Vasquez were here as security and support, she didn’t expect to be invited to the meeting.

The conference room was small and thus densely populated. Around the oval table, almost all the chairs were occupied.

She recognized the Mayor and his vice, the superintendent and who was probably a secretary of sorts, the stripes of on the sleeve of an officer indicated him as a Sergeant, so that was the chief of the Intelligence Unit.

There were also three people from the army, a male captain, a woman lieutenant, and an elderly male general.

Then Alex spotted the Director when Moon walked up to the chair beside his, and further down the table, beside the last empty seats, there were two detectives, a man and a woman, and two NCPD officers, both women, one of whom was…

Maggie.

Holy f…

Her skin heated with the knowledge that Maggie now knew she was a DEO agent. She was half thankful and half embarrassed that the choice had been taken from hers, and she hoped that Maggie understood why she couldn’t be more open about her occupation.

She ignored Fiamma’s display of joyful, explosive flames and focused on looking as apologetic as she could to Maggie’s surprised look.

Honestly, she thought Maggie should have appeared more shocked, but maybe she was just schooling herself in front of her superiors.

Alex mentally scolded Director Henshaw for not having told her about the nature of the meeting beforehand so she could prepare Maggie for the revelation, and then she mentally scolded herself for having let her body walk on auto-pilot, as she found herself sitting right next to Maggie before she realized she had done it.

Vasquez took the seat between her and Moon, and Alex subtly checked on her. The poor woman seemed to be buzzing out of her skin with nervousness.

Thankfully, Alex and Vasquez were called in during the budget revision for the new task force, so Alex could sweep the room’s Animas to get a better sense of the people involved in the project.

Everybody’s Anima looked excited or resolved, apart from a couple of spheres of general colors, not fully developed Animas, and apart from Fiamma’s on-going enthusiast towards Alex, there were two Animas who were decidedly not amused: the vice-major’s, and the General’s.

As Director Henshaw started talking about the resources that the DEO was going to pool in on the project, the General interrupted:

“I hope the timing of the dispatch of your resources won’t be as tardy as your agents, Director.”

The General pointed at Alex and Vasquez with a minute nod of his balding head, and Alex felt herself starting to fume.

In the blink of an eye, Henshaw’s, Moon’s, Vasquez’s Anima and Fiamma, all seemed to start talking vehemently.

Henshaw’s Anima didn’t have a mouth, but its golden pattern pulsed, as if in tandem with words, while Vasquez’ Anima looked ready to bite the General’s Anima at a moment’s notice, and was barely restraining itself.

It looked like an epic screaming match, and Alex was ever so glad not to be an Audite.

She saw her Anima’s shadows spasm and pulse, Fiamma pointing her chubby claws at the General, and Maggie’s hand twitching on her thigh, but she kept her gaze on the Director, and saw him keeping quiet, taking her cue that she could defend herself autonomously.

“I had to salvage a sample of an alien substance after I prevented a possible contamination with one of the lab assistants. I gave notice of the delay and received orders to give the accident top priority.”

The Director’s Anima turned to her and nodded at her level tone. Its unblinking eye gave her a sense of security and its lack of mouth, instead of being creepy, relayed an aura of calm and resolution.

“I was ordered to wait for Agent Danver’s arrival,” said Vasquez beside her, and Alex felt proud as she found her voice unwavering.

The General shot a dismissive glance at Vasquez before staring back at Alex.

“What kind of substance did your lab team manage to mess up?”

“It’s classified,” she responded immediately, earning another nod from Henshaw’s Anima.

“You will find that nothing’s classified for me, agent.”

His calm tone unnerved her, but she breathed in and focused on her words.

“On the contrary, General, the DEO foundational act clearly states that no military or federal personnel is to become privy to extra-normal matters handled by the DEO, unless during a joint case or under explicit governmental permission.”

“Well, at they know their rules.”

With this seemingly disinterred dismissal, the General refocused on Henshaw as if he’d never interrupted the report, while Alex kept her gaze up for a few more seconds, taking in the still quarreling Animas, before ducking her gaze slightly.

Fiamma squatted beside her thigh immediately, looked at her, curled her claws into tiny fists and smiled, and she looked so encouraging and adorable that Alex had to fight the urge to smile back at her.

The urge that she couldn’t fight was to reach for Maggie’s tightly curled fists on her thighs.

Her fingers were white with the strain of keeping her fists closed, and before Alex knew, she touched the other woman’s thigh, a few inches below her fist, with her fingertips.

She pushed for one, two, three seconds. A silent support.

Before she retreated her hand, Maggie’s fingers snatched hers in the blink of an eye. She squeezed them tightly, for no more than a handful of seconds (Alex couldn’t summon numbers all of a sudden so she didn’t count them), and finally released her.

Alex retreated her hand slowly as Maggie smoothed invisible wrinkles out of her uniform’s trousers, and they set to wait.

.

.

.

Alex saw it from a mile away, but not for herself, for Maggie.

When the first participants of the newly formed Meta-Science Division were announced, Alex already knew that Maggie would have been promoted on the spot.

Even with what little she put together from her (cough)cyber-stalking, and even with what little she understood about Maggie’s personality during their rendevouz, she knew Maggie was too good a cop to remain one for long.

First, General Lane announced that Lieutenant Lane would be the liaison for the military side.

Alex carefully regarded the woman that she’d erroneously thought was with the superintendent.

She had slightly androgynous and looked like she could wipe the floor with you with her pinky finger.

Her Anima looked like a frozen ghostly child, a pastel violet, hair-like cloud was pinned into a bun with a little spear of ice, and part of it, and part of the Anima’s face was covered by a cone-shaped hat. One eye was visible from a cut in the hat, shining steel under the room’s light.

The rest of the Anima’s body was covered in a white, translucent nightgown, that let out puffs of snow as she swayed slightly from side to side. Like Moon’s Anima’s sand, the snow disappeared before it hit the ground.

Despite the frost appearance, the child bowed respectfully to each and every person around the group after Lane’s role in the unit was announced. Just for that gesture, Alex decided to count Lane as made of a different cloth than the Generale.

Next, the chief of the Intelligence Unit announced his people in a gravely slow drawl.

“As sorry as I am to see detectives Halstead and Lindsay go, they fought tooth and nail to be here, and I’m proud to say they’ve more than earned my recommendation.”

The two detectives smirked at each other good-naturedly, and their Animas nodded at Lane’s in greeting.

“Plus,” continued the Sergeant. “Recommended by the chiefs of the precincts where they’ve worked in, officer Burgess and officer Sawyer are joining the task force to represent the National City Police Force. Of course, you’re both promoted effective immediately. Congratulations, detectives.”

Alex was ready for it, and didn’t jump at Fiamma’s explosion.

She’d also expected a reaction from Maggie, ready to turn around and compliment her, but the only outward sign Maggie let out was to clasp her hands into tight fist under the table again.

It was such a small gesture, that spoke of emotions bursting at the seams of the situation, and Alex understood that Maggie felt too overwhelmed even for compliments, so she turned around on Henshaw, as it was his turn now.

“For the new task force I have nothing short of my best agents. Agent Moon, alpha team leader, was about to be transferred to the El Paso branch, but he’ll be relocated as the permanent liaison senior agent for the Meta-Science division.”

Moon looked at Henshaw with a relieved smile, while his Anima, too, looked around at its new colleagues and nodded at them.

“Agent Vasquez, IT consultant, is promoted to IT specialist and field agent, liaison junior agent for the new division.”

Vasquez almost vibrated in her seat in excitement, while her Anima hopped and hollered beside her, too out of it too greet its colleagues’ Animas.

Henshaw’s Anima looked at it with an air of fondness, although Alex had no idea how she could interpret the expressionless creature.

“And finally,” said the Director looking at her, sending a nervous shiver down her spine.

“Agent Danvers, alpha team vice-captain and lab coordinator, is promoted to the DEO’s science department chief researcher, acting alpha team leader and liaison senior officer of the new inter-departmental division.”

Alex’s heartbeat stuttered and her skin buzzed as she stared at her Director with disbelief.

She almost asked ‘Sorry, what?’ but the seriousness with which the Director stared at her cut off that moronic thought.

“The team leader position is only until we find Moon’s replacement, then you can resume your work as usual Agent.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied immediately, instinctively, earning a nod both from Henshaw and his Anima.

As they averted their gazes from her, she fought the urge to let her shoulders slump under the shock of what the hell had happened in the last previous 30 seconds.

Did she just get promoted?

Did she just get assigned to the new task force?

The task force where Maggie was going to work at?

Holy shit.

For a moment, she couldn’t hear, see, smell anything. There was only a deep, overpowering relief within her, so deep she wanted to face-plant onto her bed and cry for just a minute.

She subtly blew out a breath, as Fiamma knelt by her thigh again.

Her flames seemed to be running at 110% capacity, they were so bright Alex fought the urge to squint. She was smiling and saying something, while she shook her clawy fist furiously. Alex knew  that she was congratulating her and risked a tiny wink that could pass as a tic of her eyelash.

Fiamma’s returning 100-watt smile was so worth it.

Plus, when she risked a glance beside her, she saw Maggie’s lips slightly turned up in a smile, and _that_ made her feel like her own guts had turned into actual fireworks.

.

.

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	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the other members of the new task force are further introduced, and Alex takes some time to be herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round of applause for the wonderful beta-reader of this chapter (and hopefully future chapters), the one and only TheAwkwardLonelyBear! /thanks all the lesbian gods/
> 
> Trigger warning: There is another angsty lone quality time here. If you’re uncomfortable with that, feel free to skip the second half of the chapter. Stay safe dearies!

**Omne-Audite:** _Lat_. From:

 

**Omne,** _omnis_ _n. n. III_

The totality.

And:

**audĭo** : _audis, audii, auditum, audīre_ ; _v. tr. IV._  
To hear.

.

An extremely rare category.  
Omne-Audites can hear all Animas, manifested and un-manifested.

There is a spectrum of clarity and scope in the hearing ability of Omne-Audite individuals.

However, further studies need to be conducted on the matter.

.

.

.

The members of the new task force went out for drinks that evening.

The detectives from Intelligence, Halstead and Lindsay, already knew each other well, that much was obvious a moment’s glance. They formed a unit of their own and didn’t seem too open in making conversation with the others, but they were content to listen to their new colleagues in silence, sometimes exchanging silent words with quick glances.

Halstead’s Anima had a bat-like shape. It had a short, spiked tail, clawed wings, closed eyes, and a big rat-like nose and enormous, purple ears. Two were positioned on the front, and a smaller pair sprouted from the back. It didn’t move from his perch on Lindsay’s Anima, but its ears quivered and inclined this way and that continuously.

Lindsay’s Anima had a humanoid shape, but had the appearance of a frog down spat. Its hands and feet had two sets of claws each of mismatched colors, brightly-colored blobs on its skin pulsated inward and outward the overall level of its skin, giving the creature a sickly yet strangely alive feeling at the same time. Its head was crowned by several rows of tiny brightly-colored horns, and the sack in its throat pulsed with a different color with each breach the Anima drew.

The Anima’s overall appearance was nothing short of disturbing based on her experience, but it gazed at humans and Animas alike with a placid calmness, its beady, star-shaped black eyes.

Officer Burgess was congenial and looked as if she was uncertain whether she wanted to be friendly from the get go or seize everybody up for a bit longer.

Her Anima resembled a bunny, and it would have looked so cute and innocent if it weren’t for its extremely-heavy looking coat of steel. It engulfed its body in a round case-like armor but for its limbs, head and ears, although its ears wore steel spikes to sharpen the ends. Despite its metal armor, the Anima stood on its four legs quite lightly, sniffing at its human’s new colleagues and regarding everybody with trusting, tiny green eyes.

Lane’s Anima appeared calm and poised, its icy ghostly robe swished translucently and let Alex see the dark tiled floor of the pub. It seemed to have struck a conversation with Burgess’ and Vasquez’ Animas and Fiamma, and the trio often dissolved in giggles.

The first thing Lieutenant Lane had done after their group had walked into the pub was whispering apologies for her father.

She didn’t say the exact word ‘sorry,’ but her dissociation from her father’s attitude was clear, and Alex listed her as friendly despite her prickly rigidness and her lightning quick wit.

Vasquez seemed to had settled comfortably enough in the present company, while Moon seemed to hesitate between involving the detectives more and trying to keep up with Lane’s insanely fast and unshakeable quips.

It was impressive.

Alex had imagined that she was going to talk with Maggie a lot, but apart from  exchanging breathless congratulations, it seemed that they both wordlessly prioritized to familiarize themselves with their new work colleagues.

After all, these were the people that would have their backs in a pinch, and they needed to trust each other implicitly, even a little bit, to work as a unit.

She also spent some time in studying her colleagues’ Animas, their behavior, actions and interactions.

What with the pub they chose being fairly popular, there were many people and things to see that could excuse her for not keeping her gaze on the others all the time.

In the back of her mind, she had thought that the pretty blonde who crossed Maggie’s path at the counter where she went to get another bowl of chips hadn’t been coincidental, but she pushed the thought away, annoyed with herself.

When a waitress delivered a drink for Maggie offered by the same woman and Lane remarked that she was going to get lucky tonight, Alex’s first reaction was to scoff, but even she had to admit that it was pretty obvious by that point.

“Maybe I can get a break from thinking about my ex.”

Her heartbeat started to thud faster at Maggie’s words and morose expression, while Fiamma’s flames withered faster than fresh recruits in front of Henshaw’s GlareTM.

“Ouch, sorry about that,”

Lane put down her drink and regarded Maggie carefully.

“Are you going with her?” asked Burgess with an air of both camaraderie and genuine curiosity, as if she was unsure if she could ask something like that to a new coworker.

“You know what, I think I will.”

The words felt like a punch to the guts and she fought against the instinct to curl her hands into fists so much that they shook on the table. To hide them, she stroke her thighs as if cold, and tried to think about something, anything else.

God, what was wrong with her. A dark, murderous feeling rose inside of her towards her own feeling. She had no right to feel the way she felt, and Maggie would have felt patronized and would have dismissed her with contempt, if she knew.

Her Anima’s shadows were vibrating and pulsing, and generally scaring the shit out of the surrounding Animas.

She focused on thoughts of work and on the expanse of the desert that she saw when she drove to and from the DEO, and the memory calmed her down enough to focus back on the on-going conversation about superhero movies that they had going on.

But later in the evening, when they began to separate and Maggie walked to the pretty blonde, Alex couldn’t fight the flight instinct anymore.

She briskly extracted herself from the company, slinked outside and hopped on her bike, driving to the nearest dirty pub she remembered where she’d picked up before.

And it was easy, so easy.

She was already bored the moment a stranger leaned against her by the counter. She was pissed off the second he made a vulgar gesture to his friends as they walked out the club. She was sick by the way he ground his groin against her butt as she drove to his address. And she was absolutely thoroughly fucking done when he asked her how she liked it when he pulled his briefs down.

So. Fucking. Done.

Poor sod, she thought ironically as her Anima strangled his vaguely ice cream-shaped Anima into a pitiful blob of colors.

It had been a while since she projected such a strong violent impulse that her Anima pushed another to the point where reverted back to an ephemeral shape.

In a few seconds, the man was asleep, Alex didn’t even need to chop him in the stomach, even though she’d wanted to. What a weak man, to be influenced so strongly by their own Anima. Geez, you were supposed to feel some vertigo from something like that, not pass out entirely.

Her previous mood came back to her with a vengeance as soon as she adjusted back her clothes and stepped out of the guy’s apartment.

She thought of Maggie, and immediately regret it.

Maggie was certainly enjoying her time in the expert arms of that pretty woman, forgetting all about the moronic woman who’d let her go.

She imagined going back to the stranger’s apartment, ring the door, wake him up, getting him worked up again and just scratch this angry itch that had settled under her skin. But he certainly didn’t strike her as somebody who would let a woman on top of him, so she would have never found her own completion.

For a second, she contemplated faking it, but she immediately struck the wall of the building with her first and bit back a snarl.

Fuck going back and most importantly fuck faking it.

She’d swore to herself that she was done with that shit when she turned on a new leaf with the DEO.

Why the fuck this was happening to her, she’d finally come to something resembling a peace in front of her lack of sexual life, and now she felt like nothing short of flinging herself into the icy river would cool down the angry, unbridled feeling that was buzzing within her like a caged bird.

In her apartment, she let out a sigh of relief and hastily dropped all her clothes in the laundry basket before she entered the shower.

Under the warming water her mind, unbidden, started to conjure images of Maggie and the blonde, of what they were likely doing right then. Were they in bed or on a random piece of furniture? Was Maggie haunted by thoughts of her ex or was she enjoying herself? And _how_ was she enjoying herself…

She shook her head in a vain attempt to keep her wandering thoughts at bay. Her Anima was perched, as usual, on the upper edge of the shower stall, and she had an inkling that it knew what she was thinking and she slammed her hand on the wall in angry embarrassment.

What the hell was she doing, digging up old inclinations, long buried by years of self-regulation, and tainting Maggie with them?

She showered hastily, not feeling any better after it, her muscles wounded tight and ready to strike. With a frustrated snarl she noticed that she was aroused now. She hadn’t been with the man’s hands all over her. The realization summoned insistent scenarios of Maggie and blondie, and she felt her knees go weak with the force of her want.

She envisioned the pretty blonde taking off Maggie’s undershirt between heated kisses and caresses. Was Maggie’s underwear so tight that her breasts bounced a bit when she undressed, or was it a measure larger, so her bra showed when she leaned down, maybe to slip her pants off?

Before she could control her body, she had kneeled on the rug in front of the washing machine and the dryer, opening her thighs and pressing her palm between her legs. Her heart pounded, her skin was licked by invisible flames, and her breath felt hot and too loud in the… darkness.

She was in the darkness, but she’s showered with the light on.

She looked toward the switch, by the door, which was being closed by her Anima.

It wasn’t as indistinct blob as usual, but a humanoid shadow. Two tiny tendrils of solid black pointed at the floor were its legs, darkness swirled in the shape of a cloak, a round black head smoked darkness from the top, and finally a tiny, long-fingered hand was holding the door.

Once it was closed, her Anima turned around. Shadows covered its face, as if the collar of the coat was done up all the way purposefully.

What passed for its legs moved towards her, until it stood beside her.

Her neck hurt by looking at it from her position, but she felt like she couldn’t take her eyes off of its form. It was humanoid. There was a memory in her mind, buried by time and resentment, but before she could try to grasp it, her Anima plunged on the floor beside her, and was a blob of spiraling darkness once more.

She realized, then, that she was safe to have some time for herself. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she could have this moment, in her dark bathroom, naked with her nightmarish Anima beside her.

She could be herself for a few minutes.

Nonetheless, when she pressed down again she felt so ashamed, being aroused while thinking about Maggie in _that_ way.

She breathed deeply, testing herself, pushing and sliding, but only once she started imagining herself in the blonde stranger’s stead, she could get a rhythm.

Half of the things she wanted to do to Maggie, with Maggie, were monstrous. They were too possessive, too destructive, and her emotions were frighteningly powerful and they scared her, and surely they would have scared Maggie off in an instant, if she ever knew about them.

She bit back a moan, when she thought about her Anima being replaced by Fiamma at any moment. The thought caught her by surprise. How could she not think about that before? She couldn’t stand have Fiamma seeing her like that.

But as quickly as the thought hit, quickly it dissipated from her mind. She was in her home, alone with her Anima, and nobody and nothing were going to take this moment from her.

She let her thighs relaxed again, her hand move again, and let imagination run on her absurd desires, on her reckless need for Maggie.

She imagined kissing Maggie like she wanted to be kissed by men. She imagined caressing her, in the swell of her breasts, behind her knees, tracing her ankles.

By the time she tried to imagine what tracing her ribs with her tongue might taste like, she slid her fingers back against her clit, tugging and pushing against the patch of quivering heat with abandon and desperation, one she’d never had allowed herself to feel before. Maggie had torn down all of her defenses.

“Fuck,” she meant to whisper, but it came out as a sob.

Her fingers slid easily, but she wanted something more, somebody.

Would Maggie hold her breast or her shoulders when she embraced her? Would she whisper in her ear or bite her ear, or kiss her neck? Would she let Alex ride her beautifully toned thighs or two, or three of her fingers instead?

A groan escaped her as she dropped her head forward, letting it hit against something, she didn’t care, she only cared about the exquisite pressure building in her clit.

The darkness had grown around her. She couldn’t even see her own body, she blinked, and she had no idea whether her eyes were open or closed, and the safety that came with that darkness made it perfect.

In her mind, Maggie let her teeth run over her pulse point, her nails ghost over her ribs, she called her ‘babe,’ and Alex couldn’t keep the whine inside her even if she’d wanted to.

Her heart was loud in her ears and between her legs, her breath coming out in short sobs, she curled her fingers, imagining they were Maggie’s, her thighs trembled uncontrollably, and the world exploded behind her eyelids.

 Her breath resounded in the darkness and she shut her eyes, trying to calm herself down.

Her fingers were sticky and uncomfortably hot, but she had no strength in her legs to stand up yet.

Something fell on her shoulder, startling her, a breath came out as a wheeze, when she realized that her Anima had dropped a washcloth on her.

“Thanks,” she sighed, slurring a bit, and slowly relaxed as she cleaned her fingers and the inside of her thighs.

It would have been so easy to remain kneeling on the soft, plush rug of her bathroom floor, alone and peacefully spent, and feel contented.

But no, of course nothing was ever easy for her, and she had to bite back tears as the wave of shame and self-hatred hit her.

What had she done? Wailed her mind as she tried not to let more sobs out of her mouth. She brought herself off while thinking about a woman, and not just any woman, but _Maggie_.

She’s never let herself do that, before.

Not since Vicky, not since she realized that she loved in a weird, freaky, wrong way.

With Vicky before and with Maggie now, she tainted a beautiful friendship that could have lasted years, maybe even decades. She ruined it.

She was fine without sex, sex with men never felt good, and she rarely felt the need to bring herself off.

What’s more, she swore to herself not to think about Maggie like that when she felt like they became friends.

What had she done? She broke her vow, she dirtied every interaction she’d had with Maggie.

And they were coworkers now, oh god.

Maggie was intuitive and quick-witted, she was bound to notice Alex’s gross desire, and in an alternate universe, even if she’d ever reciprocated, she’d soon wish she never had, because Alex’s feelings burned and suffocated until there was nothing left.

Alex remained slumped on the floor, her knees started to hurt but she ignored them, or rather, she was in such turmoil that she barely felt them.

All her mental energy went into fighting against the tears, the shame, the fear of being discovered, the fear of her own thoughts, the longing for something to hold and love for once in her life.

_Why am I like this_ , she thought, and hoped that her Anima wouldn’t let Fiamma switch with it at least until she picked herself up, the next day, piece by dark piece.

.

.

.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex wasn't expecting this from her first patrol with Maggie. Ft. alien birds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the awards to TheAwkwardLonelyBear for the great cheering, beta-reading and overall support. Sorry I bothered you during the Easter break dearie!
> 
> Also thanks to every kind of support and encouragement you readers give me. I love this fandom so much.  
> I cherish every kudo, bookmark, subscription and every single word of every comment.

**Commūtātĭo:** _Lat._

commūtātĭo, commutationis

_Change; inversion; substitution; exchange._

.

A Commutatio occurs when the Animas of two individuals switch places.

The switch is instantaneous and can provoke subjectively different collateral effects, such as vertigo, nausea, elevated body temperature, fatigue, epilepsy, and even coma in rare instances.

On the contrary, the practice of Commutatio can cause arguably positive effects to the pair of Animas who perform it, although these effects have never been fully demonstrated in the hard sciences.

The Commutatio effects pivot on the deepening bond between individuals and their own Animas, and even on the bond between the two individuals and the two Animas.

Since the process of the Commutatio can be performed only between the Animas of individuals who share a strong emotional connection, this practice has been romanticized since the development of romantic medieval poems.

Nowadays, couples who attempt the Commutatio at least once in their relationship amount to 37% globally.

The repeated failed attempts at this practice are common causes for chronic illnesses and psychological disorders.

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.

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Alex had expected the IDPU (Inter-Departmental Paranormal Unit) to have a very slow beginning, but roughly a couple of weeks after the meeting day, the members of the unit were driving around downtown, trying to catch sight of a gang of young aliens who were allegedly terrifying the neighborhood.

Alex had set up a different comm line for the IDPU vehicles and they often kept the line open.

Right then, for instance, Halstead was arguing with Moon about lease terms for apartments in the northern district. Burgess was on a double-man mission with Alex in trying to make Lane understand why country music festivals should be the city events committee’s number one priority for the following summer. While Maggie and Lindsay seemed content in quipping in with sassy remarks every now and then.

That day also marked the first time when Maggie and Alex ended up in the same patrol car.

In the past couple of weeks, Alex had spent more or less half of her working hours at the DEO, checking what equipment could be transferred to the task force’s new offices in the city and expressing her opinions on the Director’s candidates as new team alpha leader and vice-leader, even if she was completely dumbfounded by this privilege.

She’d beaten Maggie at rock-paper-scissor for the wheel, but she regretted her competitive streak now. In the rush of the moment, she’d forgotten how uncomfortable it was to drive for long periods of time in the city, with all the Animas around.

Riding her bike had always been easier, the helmet gave her a sort of tunnel vision, and she never drove in circles like patrol cars did.

The present company helped, though.

She could never tire of sneaking quick glances at Maggie. The way she chipped at her nails, the way her hips shifted to look this way and that, the way she snapped wittily at one of the others over the comm, with a hint of a dimple on her cheek, every little thing fascinated Alex immensely, and she carefully filed every information away, hoarding the notions and being irrationally jealous of every single person before her who’d already noticed them.

Of course, the presence of her Anima and Fiamma also helped. When Alex found herself weary in the attempt to ignore all the Animas and people milling around, she would look in the rear-view mirror and see a giant whirlwind of shadows huddled all the way to the side, and a flaming djinn-like bundle of joy all the way to the opposite side. The scene never failed to make her grin and relax.

Fiamma had initially stayed in the middle, but her Anima had said something and Fiamma had immediately scooted all the way to the side. No doubt her Anima told Fiamma that with her flaming head covering the back mirror, she could see next to nothing, and she was grateful for Fiamma’s good-natured personality, since she didn’t seem mad in the least by the demand.

When Alex drove with them, Lindsay’s, Burgess’ and Moon’s Animas had either curled themselves in their human’s lap, or they huddled themselves close to the window because they were visibly intimidated by Alex’s Anima, but Fiamma had scooted away with a grin and a wave, and the simple knowledge that another Anima knew about her ability and didn’t seem to mind brightened her mood every time she thought about it.

She turned the car into the Lawdale Avenue and it was soon apparent that something was off with the neighborhood. After a careful inspection, she found the source of her unease.

All the nearby people’s Animas were staring into the same direction.

She slowed down the car a bit and realized that the focus of the general stare was a back alley between two old condos.

Her unease turned into apprehension when she noticed that her Anima and Fiamma started staring at it, too.

She slowed down incrementally, trying to understand what was going on without giving the impression that she was pulling over. She didn’t want to alert Maggie, since she hadn’t the foggiest idea about how she could explain what was bothering her. Of course, all the people were going about their day placidly, it was just all the Animas who kept staring towards the same alley.

Maybe she could say that she suddenly felt famished and wanted to pick up a sandwich, but she didn’t see any grocery stores or diners in the vicinity.

Damn.

“Danvers?”

Double damn.

She turned towards Maggie before she could school her expression, and she knew she saw something dawn in on her partner, since Maggie frowned and started to look around, too.

But of course there was nothing wrong, and Alex started lowering her foot on the accelerator, ready to drive off. Maybe she could check it out after the shift ended.

But she interrupted her movement. They were very near the entrance of the alley now, and she noticed all the Animas of the pedestrians suddenly gave it wide berth, and those who had distinctive features looked terrified.

Acting on instinct, she stomped on the brake, and her hand moved from the gears to her gun before she could control herself.

Maggie either saw her movement on the glass or heard the rustle of fabric, because her fingers flew to the comm, finger hovering on the call button, while her other hand grabbed the door handle, ready to step out.

Alex would have never admitted it out loud, but Maggie’s prompt reaction and the way she tersely looked around on the sidewalk tug at her heart with an intensity that would have made her weak in the knees if she weren’t already sitting.

“Danvers?” whispered Maggie, pulling her out of her musings.

“Y-Yes. I think I saw something. Might be nothing.” She knew it sounded stupid but she didn’t know where to start to describe the situation.

“Or might be something.”

Fiamma walked through the car door and approached the alley. Alex had to bite her lip to keep herself from calling her. Whatever was happening, she didn’t want Fiamma nowhere near it without backup.

When her own Anima started to coil itself around her shoulders, as if it sensed danger and wanted to be close just in case, that, coupled with the tense way in which Fiamma was walking towards the entrance of the alley, finally prompted her into action. She pulled over, killed the engine, and when Maggie sneaked a glance towards her, she cocked her head towards the comm unit.

“Unit 4. Possible sighting on Lawdale, checking in.”

Maggie’s tone was calm, neither brusque nor nervous, only the way she flexed her hand on the door handle, and the way her eyes darted on the sidewalk, betrayed uneasiness.

After the rest of the squad replied, they got out of the car quietly.

Fiamma turned towards them, pointed towards the alley, and said something. She looked doubtful, upset, and Alex was hit by the curiosity to know what she said.

Before (literally) stumbling into Maggie and Fiamma, she’d almost never wondered about what Animas said, but the longer she remained in their company, the longer she saw Fiamma and her Anima interacting, the more often she’d started to wonder about what Animas said. How did they talk? What kind of voices did they have?

In the meantime, the human passersby were still all going on about their day, while their Animas still looked freaked out.

She felt deeply grateful to Maggie for trusting her so much on this, because she still had no inkling of what was going on, apart from the Animas’ alarming behavior.

She adjusted her gun in her shoulder holster for a quick draw and she also adjusted her vest as she rounded the car and coming up beside Maggie.

Maggie was also adjusting her jacket around her shoulders and checking her vest, and even if she’d just done so herself, seeing Maggie preparing herself heightened her nerves.

Fiamma spoke again, still pointing towards the alley, and Alex wished she was able to hear her, until she looked at Maggie’s face and felt even more nervous.

Now Maggie was also staring at the empty alley with a frown and a rigid set to her mouth. She fumbled with something under her jacket until Alex heard the tell-tale sound of nylon against nylon and knew that Maggie was tightening her shoulder holster.

(Alex totally wasn’t in the habit of admiring the way it hugged her chest, uh-hu, nope).

“Sawyer,” she said to catch Maggie’s attention.

Fiamma was a few step ahead of them, staring ahead of her. Maggie turned her beautiful chocolate-brown eyes to Alex, raising her eyebrows in question.

She didn’t know why she called Maggie, she just didn’t like seeing her spooked, and perhaps wanted to reassure her, but she not a single coherent thought was to be found right then, not even an excuse as to why she was about to drag Maggie on a wild run.

Her Anima said something and the resulting trail of shadows was blown by the faint wind towards Maggie, obfuscating her nod for a moment.

“It’s okay. This place gives the creep to my Anima.”

It was just an old expression people used to say instead of admitting that they were afraid. It was a quaint saying, it made people laugh half the time, but in her circumstances it just made Alex tense up even more.

They walked into the alley together.

Back entrances to the nearby condos lined up, and emergency stairs descended from the sides of the buildings like skeletal, limp limbs.

Fiamma walked ahead of them, and Alex saw in her peripheral vision the shadows of her Anima, and with Maggie as tense and focused beside her, she felt invincible.

A short, loud bang, like of an emergency door banging shut, was heard, and in the blink of an eye both she and Maggie had their guns out and briskly reached the end of the alley, the source of the echo.

Alex hurried her pace to place herself in front of Maggie as both Fiamma and her Anima passed ahead of them.

She heard Maggie huff, probably having recognized the move and was frustrated by the patronizing subtext, but didn’t comment. Nonetheless, Alex mentally berated herself. Protective instinct or not, she was being an ass, so she (slightly) sidestepped to cover only Maggie’s left flank. (Based on her shooting range marks, she favored her right peripheral vision anyway).

At the corner of the alley with another one was the entrance to the condo’s parking lot.

Alex promptly grabbed the handle so Maggie wouldn’t, waiting for Fiamma to disappear behind the door, then re-emerging and motioning them to come in. Only then, she pushed the handle. If Maggie found the pause puzzling, again, she didn’t comment on it.

Inside the parking lot the atmosphere was dark, and the damp and the stink of soot and dust were overwhelming.

Everything seemed perfectly calm, nothing stood out at a glance. Aware that they still had nothing going on but a sound, Alex asked:

“Should we call it in?”

Maggie looked around pensively. “As you said, could be nothing. Let’s just walk around for now.”

Nodding, Alex begrudgingly mirrored Maggie in holstering her gun.

They slowly made their way through the extensive parking floor, their Animas walked and floated a few paces up ahead, when suddenly Maggie tensed up beside her.

Her body became visibly taut with tension in the blink of an eye, her gun faltered for a moment, then then Alex saw her fingertips becoming white with the strength with which she was clutching her weapon.

Before Alex could ask Maggie what was wrong, Fiamma walked backwards to them and her Anima floated back to their rear.

Thus flanked, they proceeded further into the parking lot until they reached a heavy-looking door, leading presumably to the external emergency stairs, and another door to the building’s elevator became visible in the fading daylight. Then the layout of the floor drew a 90° curve and they couldn’t see much ahead of them.

Alex matched Fiamma’s slow pace and walked closer and closer to Maggie. Her hands itched to reach for her gun, but she blew out a slow breath and steeled her nerves. As they arrived at the heavy door Alex tried to squint in the direction where Fiamma and Maggie were staring, ahead of the bend, but she couldn’t see nor hear anything.

“Sawyer?”

“Yes?”

“Can you send Fiamma up the stairs for rec?”

She heard Maggie taking in a sharp breath, a sort of gasp, but she made no comment. One wasn’t supposed to involve another person’s Anima in anything, especially work, and especially if the other person wasn’t your partner in life or a close family member.

Fiamma had already turned towards them, having heard the question, and was shifting her fiery gaze back and forth between Alex to Maggie.

In the interminable minute that followed, Alex thought of a dozen ways in which she could apologize for her rudeness, when her Anima distracted her momentarily by saying something, and she unconsciously traced the wisp of shadows in the darkening space.

“Good call coming here, there’s definitely something fishy. And Fiamma says that the stairs are clear.”

Maggie’s voice brought her out of her musings with a start. She turned around, and true enough, Fiamma was standing by the door with Maggie, an easy smile on her flames-framed face and two big, clawed thumbs up.

She quickly averted her gaze and focused on Maggie, hoping that she didn’t linger for long staring at nothing, when she noticed that Maggie herself was staring back at her. She cocked her head towards Fiamma, raised her eyebrows in a gesture of exasperation and even shook her head for the complete effect.

The gesture would have been cute if it hadn’t meant that Fiamma was manifest now.

She observed Fiamma closely then, she scrutinized her from feet to head, trying to determine if the contours of the flaming patterns on her body were more defined, if the light that her flames emitted was brighter. But as usual, nothing stood out to her, nothing seemed any different.

Damn it.

She clenched her teeth but still spared a smile for Fiamma. She didn’t want the sweet Anima to think that she was angry with her.

She needed to be doubly mindful of her now, she couldn’t allow herself to slip in front of Maggie, she was sure she couldn’t bear the consequences otherwise.

Not wanting to divide her focus so much, she waited until Fiamma walked by and pressed herself against her side, close enough to let her elbow brush her body every step or so.

If Maggie found their vicinity awkward, thank goodness, she didn’t say anything.

Or maybe she wanted to but was interrupted, Alex would have never known, because out of the silence resounded a quickly muffled shout of pain.

Fiamma’s flames died out for a second before coming back with a vengeance, enveloping her in an orange-yellow cocoon of swirling fire.

Maggie stepped beside her, gun already drawn, and her impeccable training and nerves shone through when she immediately brought her comm unit to her mouth.

“Unit 4, parking lot of building at the corner with two back alleys on Lawdale. Screaming heard.”

The unit buzzed to life a second later with Burgess’ voice.

“Unit 3 copy that, coming in.”

Which usually meant ‘wait until you’re sure you’ve got backup.’ However, Fiamma’s whirling flames spoke of a fight, of battle, and a moment later a dead serious-looking Maggie moved forward, her gun in a white vice-like grip.

Maggie’s usually soft expression and softer dark brown eyes left no room to wait for backup.

Fuck it, Alex thought, she herself was the backup.

Drawing her own gun, she stepped forward to match Maggie’s pace and together they rounded the bend of the parking floor. It turned out to be a U-shaped turn and from the area of the opposite wall, by another door, a thud was heard.

Immediately, they crouched down behind the nearest car, even the Animas.

Alex felt the reassuring weight of Maggie’s palm on her back, where it rested for balance after the sudden move, while her own knee rested on Fiamma’s chubby leg.

Fiamma’s flames did very little to light up that area of the parking lot, but it was enough that Alex didn’t need a light to squint ahead of them.

She heard a grunt next, as if someone was fighting (or fighting back), and another thud, and that was when Alex decided enough was enough and put her free hand behind her back, starting a countdown.

At her go, they all moved seamlessly, walked around the car in a few, fast side-steps.

Maggie, ever the policewoman, shouted: “NCPD, don’t move!”

An aura of darkness seemed to lift off their vicinity then, and Alex could see more clearly.

By the opposite wall there were two people lying on the ground, pinned by smoke- or shadow-covered birds or birds-like figures, at their arms, ankles, and necks.

On the wall, bigger smoky birds intently clawed at two Animas. They were quadrupeds, one covered in ice, unconscious, the other seemed to have a big leaf down its spine, still conscious but visibly in pain, its leafy tail was half shredded to bits.

A shiver of terror ran down Alex’s spine and she was shooting before she registered her index finger curling around the trigger.

She shot at the birds clawing at the leafy Anima’s tail, and the second her shot collided with one with them, everything went up in chaos.

A storm of birds rose around the unconscious individuals and the Animas, and Maggie started shooting at the birds too, and then a blood-curling high-pitched screeching resonated in the air, all around them, and in the time it took Alex to shake her head in a futile attempt to clear her ringing ears, the furious flock of birds barreled towards them.

They started shooting at them together, while Fiamma started to wave her flaming arms around, either trying to punch the birds, or grab them, or smack them, Alex had no idea but she was grateful for the chaos that her involvement seemed to have thrown the birds into. The flock seemed to be stunned by her, either by her nature or by her behavior.

Alex wasn’t sure if their bullets were damaging the birds, they did seem to be slowing the ones they hit down a bit. The hit birds staggered in flight or fell, but they were soon up in the air trying to claw at them.

Her lightning-quick mind wrote a short list of mental bullet points about their opponents. Alien birds attacking humans and Animas alike, mostly unaffected by steel bullets. What was the screeching for? How did they coordinate their movements? What could affect them more than steel bullets? Why were the bullets not working even when they connected? Were they affected by the bullets in a small capacity or was it just the noise that startled them?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the movement at the opposite wall, where a small number of birds continued to claw and pick at the Anima.

Alex couldn’t stop the flare of rage she felt at the sight. How dare these bastards keep on doing that while Maggie and she were shooting all their bullets at them!

She kneeled to get her spare gun, the one she kept strapped to her calf holster, and concentrated her fire around the maimed Animas. Firing with both hands was a tricky business, but she rejoiced for a moment when the birds either got startled or got ‘damaged’ enough that they dropped the first Anima.

Now, onto the second.          

“Alex!” Maggie’s voice resounded as she was engulfed in smoky darkness.

It smelled rancid, like rotting plants or early putrefaction, a simultaneously bitter and too-sweet smell that made her nauseous.

Her arm was tugged and yanked by sharp beaks and claws, and she instinctively raised her forearms over her eyes and ducked, furious by her helplessness to help the other Anima in time.

A flash of fire, and she could see Fiamma trying to grab and punch the birds around her, her whole body popping bursts of flames every second. She’d never seen Fiamma so furious as she was then.

“Oh my god,” gasped Maggie behind her, she dared turning to her, but her partner’s eyes were fixed on a point ahead of them both, towards the opposite wall.

She turned to look in the same direction and suddenly all breath was stolen from her lungs and she had to pocket her she stopped short and realized why Maggie had gasped.

Her Anima was by the wall, and it was an enormous whirlwind of pitch black darkness, from which four thin straight-ish shadows came out, like legs and arms, but while they looked like proper limbs in Alex’s bathroom that night, they looked more like twigs randomly attached to the black hole that was her Anima.

It was standing, or barely hovering,  above the two unconscious men, having somehow managed to get the birds off of their Anima, who were lying by the wall, both unconscious now.

The black mass used spikes and whips to hit the birds, these fire-rapid tendrils of shadows thrust into the air and retreated back into the blackness in the blink of an eye, dozens of them at a time always trying to strike the birds, while the four straight limbs simply hung in the air, semi-motionless, as if the creature didn’t quite know what to do with them.

Alex’s breath returned as a couple of birds narrowly avoided Fiamma’s elbows and tried to peck at her eyes. The bastards’ beaks hurt, so she elbowed the nearest one and staggered forward.

_Now or never,_ she thought, and she turned to Maggie, who was looking at her now, with a worried frown between her eyes, her mouth opening to say something, but Alex had no time to spare.

“Cover fire!” she said, and without waiting for Maggie’s answer she turned around and half shuffled, half crawled forward, gritting her teeth at every peck, tug and scratch that the birds managed to land.

As she moved forward, the sound of Maggie’s shots was a constant reassurance, and even more so the bursts of light as Fiamma tried to punch and claw at the damn bastards.

Her mind still was trying to grasp at the fact that her Anima was manifest in front of other people and fucking whipping a flock of Anima-torturing, alien birds, but she kept her eyes firmly on it as she shuffled closer and closer.

Eventually, she managed to get to the leafy Anima. She had heard that when people were unnaturally unconscious or in distress, their Anima manifested instinctively, but she still felt deeply relieved when she curled around the Anima’s torso and hauled it away from the chaos, under the nearest car.

She noticed, crawling back to retrieve the icy Anima, that her Anima’s shadow were getting increasingly slower, and its main body, its main mass of shadows was becoming thinner. When she crawled directly underneath it, she was certain that its blackness was less dark than it normally was, and it felt lighter too.

As she dragged the icy Anima away, she saw that her Anima’s spikes and whips didn’t reach the birds anymore. Either her Anima was slowing down or the birds were getting faster.

Dread curled up her throat as she pushed the Anima under the car, batting the birds away from her hair, thankful for the ever-going stream of shots she heard Maggie was still firing.

But it was fury, pure and simple fury, that replaced her fear when she turned around and saw the birds pecking at her Anima and some of them tearing away shadows with their beaks and claws. Each and every one that made away with its dark trophy seemed to stare at her as they ate the shadows, their beady gray-black eyes glinted in triumph and mockery.

These lurid..

She drew her gun again, but most of the birds pecking at her Anima suddenly swerved towards her. They pecked everywhere, at her ears, wrists, hips, elbows, stomach. Every time she tried to curl her finger around the trigger, at least a dozen beaks and two dozens tiny claws were on her hand.

If they’d just annoyed her before, the combined effect was a constant layer of needle-like hurt, and all her focus went into gritting her teeth in order not to cry out, she would never give anyone that satisfaction, never did during the DEO training either, and trying to bat them away long enough to fire a damn bullet.

She heard Maggie screaming her name, and flames danced in her peripheral vision.

And of course it was Fiamma, trying to grab and punch the birds around her head.

Fiamma, sweet, joyful, ever-enthusiastic Fiamma, always so happy to see her, who even befriended her Anima even though it was a simple mass of blackness, an Anima out of any sane person’s worst nightmares, and if that wasn’t telling about her soul, what else was.

Fiamma, whose flames were now reduced to tiny licks of light around her arms and belly and neck, because the birds must have tore them all off, like they did with her Anima’s shadows.

Fiamma, who snuggled in bed with her and cuddled with her after long hours of sparring, shooting and pouring over lab results and grimy, bloody alien crime scenes.

_Not_ _her_! She thought with a newly-found fury, and ignored the pain as she passed her arm around Fiamma’s belly and started dragging her towards Maggie.

Maggie was half-shooting and half batting away her own group of birds, although sparse, and suddenly her eyes focused on Alex’s right, face drawn in fury as she started to fire there.

Still dragging Fiamma with her, she swiveled her head to inspect what had drawn out Maggie’s rage.

She saw the mass of black of her Anima shrinking and crumpling to the ground near the still unconscious men, the birds kept on tearing apart its shadows with a joyous savagery.

She gritted her teeth again, swallowed her own fury, she pulled Fiamma with her, scooting backwards, her knuckles grating on the asphalt, as she still had her hand clutched around her gun.

From her left, she saw emerging from her peripheral vision, slowly but steadily… two long, fluffy ears.

A bunny.

Its body encased in metal spikes, elongating and retracting as if alive, the bunny advanced on slender long legs and trusting, tiny kelly green eyes.

She pulled a still struggling Fiamma back against her chest, scooted backwards again, but Fiamma planted her own feet firmly, and she stumbled, empty-handed on the floor.  

Fiamma stood with her back to her, and further ahead her Anima was a small mass of dark grey between the unconscious men, still pecked by birds, and for a moment they were all, humans and Animas, just staring at the ghastly, impossible scene in front of them.

Then Alex saw Fiamma pat Burgess’ bunny on a patch of metal that wasn’t growing spikes, she told the creature something and squatted lower, closing her claws into fists.

A moment later, Moon’s Anima appeared beside Burgess’, sprinkling sand everywhere, and stomping his rocky hooves rhythmically.

As if on cue, the Animas charged forward, and Alex felt a human hand grabbing her vest, dragging her backward.

She turned, Maggie was behind her, and behind the car she chose as cover, Moon and Burgess started shooting at the birds.

“Alex…”

Maggie sounded breathless as she dragged her closer to her, observing and palming at her legs, her vest, at its junctures, at her forearms. When she looked up Alex feared for a moment that she was going to take her face in her palms too.

Then she heard something sliding on the floor and truly enough, a DEO assault rifle appeared from underneath the car behind. She looked up in time to see Moon nodding at her before he focused his attention back to the damn birds.

Without wasting another second, she reloaded her gun just in case, put it back in its holster, shouldered the rifle and covered Maggie as she palmed for her spare magazine.

Now that Moon’s and Burgess’ Animas were fighting the birds, too, Alex concentrated fire to the birds around her Anima, which was still being pecked at and shrinking in return.

The longer she stared at it, the clearer she felt a painful sensation spread in her chest, until her eyes watered against her will, and the floor and the walls tilted suddenly.

The next thing she knew Maggie’s face was right above her, her warm hands, god help her, were cradling the back of her head. Or not exactly, they were palming at the back of her head, trying to check for a head injury? And why was she horizontal? When and how did she fall?

Something pinched her ear and she shook her head, refocusing on the figure above her. Maggie. Her chocolate-brown eyes were wide open, her black hairs descended on her left shoulder in a loose ponytail, the one Alex had tried not to stare at when Maggie had arranged it, back in the car.

She’s always that incredibly endearing and amazing, in every woman, the gesture of touching up or gathering one’s own hair. She wondered how Maggie’s hair would feel to the touch.

She didn’t understand why was Maggie was frowning and looked so scared and worried, until sound came back to her, slowly, and Maggie’s voice was asking her to keep strong, to fight.

Of course she was going to fight. That was the only thought that had spurred her when she’d recovered the two wounded Animas. Fight the bastards who abused their powers on the innocent and defenseless. She was going to walk out of there with both men and their Animas alive, she’d swore it to herself, or she was at least going down trying.

With renewed energy, she fought Maggie’s hands, which tried to keep her down, almost under the car, and she sat up.

She instinctively grabbed the rifle that laid beside her, but both Maggie and Fiamma put their hands on hers.

Fiamma was there, she was kneeling in front of her but she looked at Maggie, but Maggie was giving directions in her comm unit and begging Alex with her eyes.

Begging for what, Alex didn’t know, but she knew she had to fight. She knew, somehow, that her Anima was a small, powerless bundle of shadows now, crumpled on the floor, and she wanted to go out fighting beside it.

An explosion of light shifted her gaze from Maggie’s.

It came from Fiamma. She stood with a thunderous expression, flames started to whirling faster and faster around her limbs and around her big, patterned torso.

She turned around, and was suddenly flanked by Lane’s and Vasquez’ Animas, who had appeared from seemingly nowhere, Alex couldn’t recall the arrival of their humans.

Lane’s Anima’s short, icy figure seemed ten times bigger since its frozen nightgown of a body swirled wider and wider, with the force of a wind that no human could feel, or maybe it had actually gotten bigger, since the creature’s usual big hat was now dwarfed by its billowing body. The snow that covered the gown froze in place and big, heavy-looking chunks of ice started to fall from it and from the Anima’s hat.

Vasquez’ Anima had changed drastically. From a tiny quadruped, it seemed to rely more on its hind legs than his arms now, and it had grown at least five times its size.

Its scales had seemingly multiplied, and they vibrated and glistened ominously under the rhythmic flashes of light that came from the shots and the from the gap of the door by the opposite wall.  No more simple scales, they looked, for all intents and purposes, like deadly-sharp blades now.

Fiamma herself was bursting with yellow light, flames so thick they covered all of her body from view, her red-orange eyes disappeared behind her fiery armor.

They coiled more and more rapidly by the second, until she set apart her legs, coiled her arms close to her body, and slammed her chubby flaming claws to the ground, from where two snake-like whips of flames jumped to the roof and immediately after plummeted onto the nearest group of birds, blasting them apart.

That seemed to represent some kind of signal because next, the three Animas advanced together and joined Moon’s and Burgess’ Animas in the throng of the whirling birds.

Every Anima looked thunderous, but it was Fiamma, above all, who looked the angriest. She was like a raging volcano. When she spun her arms, vortexes of flames erupted from her claws and she threw them around like whips.

With these flaming whips, she got several birds off of the sides of Moon’s Anima, and several more she knocked off Burgess’ Anima’s unprotected ears.

She left the group of Animas behind to fend for each other and she slowly made her way towards the flock that was still picking at Alex’s Anima on the ground.

Then, she raised her arms high over her head, her flames spiraled from her belly, to her shoulders, and finally reached her closed claws, which burned with golden flames for a moment, before she slammed her fists down.

A burst of light erupted from the impact, so strong that Alex was blinded by it. Even when she closed her eyes, the pulsing light was seared on her eyelids and grasped her head in her hands, trying to find the comfort of darkness.

When she opened her eyes, she noticed that she had instinctively turned around, so the first thing she saw was Maggie. Her head curved towards her shoulder, her right hand was still clutching her gun, while with her left she propped herself onto the closest car for support.

Maggie opened her eyes too, scanning her surroundings and locked eyes with Alex, and all the oxygen blew out from her lungs with the next breath. Maggie’s eyes were translucent with flames, red, orange and yellow. Her expression was contorted in pure rage, worry dug a deep frown on her forehead, and her teeth were clenched so tightly, her jaw looked like it was made of marble.

The light in her eyes was merely a reflection though, since a second later it disappeared from her orbs, and the whole area became darker. Not as dark as before, Alex noticed, somebody must have found and lit the parking lot’s lights, but there was an abyssal difference between the previous light and the current artificial one.

They turned around, to check what happened, expecting to see dead birds lying around, but now only their Animas remained standing.

Well, all but one.

Fiamma, her flames subsiding by the second, stood in front of a small puddle of darkness on the ground.

“Alex,” she heard Maggie say, but she was already pushing her weak knees to a semi-straight position and staggering towards her Anima.

Walking was difficult, and she stumbled on Moon’s Anima once, but her unsteady feet eventually got her near the blob of darkness.

It was so strange, seeing her monstrously huge and ever-moving Anima so tiny and pitiful. She felt like scooping it up in her arms, but she didn’t know if it was still manifest.

Fiamma answered that question for her when she turned around, saw her, and immediately scooted her Anima up herself and retreated to the wall, making herself small in defiance to her big, spherical body and curling her slow, blood orange flames around the dark creature, so it was barely visible now.

It hit Alex with a piercing, sharp pain, the knowledge that somebody out there was protective of her Anima, that somebody out there was willing to fight for it, even though she herself had only recently come to peace with it.

On top of her body feeling heavy, her limbs sluggish, and her head aching, the knowledge that somebody out there, human or not, cared about a part of her, a deep, dark, scary part of her, was the strongest feeling, above all the pain and disorientation.

“Fiamma,” Maggie sounded half mortified and half incensed behind her. Only just then she remembered that the feelings of Animas and humans were always invariably connected. She didn’t need to be an expert in all things Animas to have noticed that.

That realization did not send a shiver down her spine. It did not.

Restraining the desire to turn around and see Maggie’s expression for herself, she took slow, small, hesitant steps towards the huddled Anima.

Gritting her teeth and trying not to wince at the pain and mounting exhaustion, she knelt beside Fiamma. She staggered when her knees protested her move, so she ended up huddled on Fiamma’s leg, closer than she intended, but the proximity felt nice. Fiamma’s body was warm and familiar.

The slow pulse of blackness in her chubby arms sobered her thoughts.

“Fiamma?”

Her voice came in a whisper, but she didn’t need to repeat herself. Fiamma turned around, stared at her, seemingly unfocused, but her lilac pupils finally locked with hers.

She looked beyond her shoulder, at Maggie, and whatever saw there convinced her.

She shuffled closer, so that her Anima couldn’t be visible to the others, and for that Alex felt incredibly grateful, as she felt when Fiamma handed her her Anima so carefully, like it was a newborn baby, frail and miraculous. Her Anima wasn’t warm as Fiamma, but it retained a sort of indescribable warmth of its own. It was the feeling of living creatures, she thought.

Seeing her Anima in her arms was so absurd, so beyond anything she knew and imagined, that she had to avert her eyes and curl itself around it. The floor was her safest bet, since her whole back and neck felt stiff.

She held back a swear word when her arms started trembling from exhaustion, her hold faltered, widened, and the small bundle of slowly spiraling shadows almost spilled out of her arms.

A hand touched her shoulder and in that moment her brain didn’t remember that it was just Maggie, she didn’t even know who Maggie was in that moment, her comprehension didn’t go beyond the small creature giving off a faint sensation of warmth, and she snapped.

“Don’t look at it.”

Her Anima was a huge mountain of shadows and nightmares with whips and spears, and impenetrable depths, and layers of darkness.

Her Anima was so badass that it had taken a whole flock of murderous alien birds until Alex could get two Animas to safety, and it didn’t deserve being stared at when it was so weakened and barely hanging in there.

But thankfully her brain rebooted soon enough and when she saw Maggie’s leather jacket crowding her peripheral vision, she had enough presence of mind to thank her and say sorry before she took the offered garment and wrapped it around her Anima.

Fuck, it was so wrong to be able to envelope her Anima in such a small jacket.

It was a creature made of nightmares and darkness, and it ruined Alex’s life, or so she’s thought, but being a Vide was part of her, it was _hers_ and hers alone.

Since she’d been promoted to field agent her ability actually helped her in numerous occasions, and she was damned if she hadn’t started to feel grateful to her Anima for that.

Fighting against exhaustion, she managed to look up to Maggie, who was standing between her and the others, shielding her and her Anima, while the rest of their unit was paging ambulances for the two unconscious young men.

She was so grateful to her, her heart burst with it. She was glad she was able to murmur a thank you before she fainted.

.

.

.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alex remembers her Anima's name and the IDPU's Animas hold a meeting to figure out what the heck is going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so long but every cut I tried to make made zero sense to me so here you are, almost 8k words.  
> If you’re not faint-hearted (which is absolutely fine btw), try googling “ossuary of Solferino.” It’s the reason why I became a pacifist when I was a little kid and it’s the reason why the epitome of “Gothic” for me is an ossuary.  
> This chapter is dedicated to my great, lovely, unbeatable beta-reader, TheAwkwardLonelyBear. Thank you so much dear!  
> A fond thought goes to honey_hill who lovingly named Alex’s Anima “shadowblob.” I grin like a lunatic every time I think about this.  
> Finally, so many thank yous to those of you who let me know their thoughts and assumptions about this strange AU of mine. You’re all so lovely, I hope you find 50€ on the ground.

**Informis:** _Lat_

_Informis, informe, adj, II._

Without a distinct shape, shapeless, deformed, monstrous.

The original Latin name of the Shapeless category of Animas.

Animas belonging to this category have no distinct form which can be assigned to the Beast or the Humanoid categories.

It is theorized that most new-born Animas fall into the Shapeless category. The most recent census in 70 countries has disclosed that 18% of the adult population declared their Anima to belong to the Shapeless category.

.

.

.

Alex wouldn’t remember this later, but she woke up briefly just as her body was being laid down on a stretcher to be carried into one of the ambulances that Halstead and Lane had called.

She allegedly rebelled so vigorously to the idea of the hospital that she almost punched one of the paramedics in the face, who was saved by Maggie and Lane half calming her down and half pushing her down on the stretcher.

Apparently she snarled at everybody not to come near her Anima, not to take it away from her, not to look at it even, and she let herself relax and fall into unconsciousness when Lane and Maggie had dragged her into one of their patrol cars, both grumbling about her stupid stubbornness.

Alex recalled vague flashes of images and sounds of this trip to the car, but it was most likely an exhaustion-induced illusion, since she had the lingering impression that Maggie was protective of her, taking almost all of her weight on her, and pressing her palm on her forearm every time she didn’t need both of her hands to drive.

.

.

.

But Alex would barely remember any of this later. Her memories started when she woke up in an unfamiliar room, the taste of gunpowder still permeating her nose and the back of her throat.

She sat up on the unfamiliar bed, noticing that she was in her underwear, and that were unfamiliar clothes at the end of the bed.

At the end of the bed was also Fiamma, writing in a journal with a vibrantly-colored childish-looking fountain pen.

Alex kept still for as long as possible, she didn’t want to disturb the flaming creature, until Fiamma turned around and noticed that she was awake.

Then, she shot to her feet, and ran out of the room.

Just like that, Alex was left alone in her underwear in completely unfamiliar surroundings.

She didn’t panic though. Fiamma was in the vicinity, she was clearly manifest, and hadn’t looked panicked, so whatever this was, it was either familiar or safe ground.

There was an old, big wardrobe but no en-suite bathroom, a tiny chair in lieu of a bedside drawer, and the queen-sized bed that had clearly been deemed more important than any other visible piece of furniture, even more important than storage space. Alex was sure that if the bed had been a normal sized one, the bedroom wouldn’t have looked so small, but she had no words of reprimand about it, since it was extremely comfortable.

A knock resounded by the door.

“Danvers? Are you decent? Can I come in?” Maggie’s voice asked.

Alex had slept in the tank top she used as a piece of underwear, so she bunched up the bed linens to cover her panties and responded affirmatively.

Even as she heard Maggie’s voice, Alex hadn’t been sure whether she’d fallen into an hallucination, and she still wasn’t sure now that Maggie stepped into the room, in sweater pants, a flannel shirt, and combed hair.

Maggie smiled a tiny, shy smile and Alex felt incredibly naked and incredibly embarrassed and had to swallow several times and pray that her heartbeat couldn’t be heard from where Maggie stood.

God, she needed to pull herself together.

“Hey, you fell back asleep in the car. Slept roughly 12 hours. The doctor at the DEO said it was normal for your level of exhaustion. They were about to keep you in the medical ward, but Fiamma threw a fit at leaving you there, and Lane and I recounted how you fought tooth and nail against the paramedics.

Your Director gave us the green light to take you home, but the doctor said to check up on you as soon as you’d wake up, so here you are. Moon carried you into my apartment, then Fiamma and your Anima had it from there. Um… I didn’t…” Maggie stalled, an enticing reddish hue rose to her dark cheeks.

“I didn’t look, I swear.”

Alex’s sleep-riddled brain took its sweet time to registered what Maggie was saying.

Oh god.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s absolutely fine.”

“It’s not, I’m so sorry. And I slept in your bed! And you don’t have to lend me clothes, I can wear the uniform.”

“You’re not wearing the uniform. It’s still drying.”

“You didn’t have to wash it, god, I’m so-“

“Sorry, I get it. You’ll buy me breakfast for a week, how about that?”

Alex squirmed under Maggie’s soft gaze, teasing smile, and the recent realization that she was curled up in Maggie’s bed linens, and nodded.

“Okay, so. If these don’t fit, Fiamma will find you something else, so don’t worry about asking her anything. Lunch is almost ready.”

Alex’s words of thankfulness got stuck in her throat as Fiamma walked back into the room and Maggie walked out with a last small smile.

Fiamma squirmed under her gaze, shifting from foot to foot. Alex sat motionless and wordless. She was entirely out of her depth.

Fiamma’s protectiveness towards her Anima in the parking lot, had it been her or Maggie?

Where did all those flames, all that power come from?

Her thoughts were interrupted when Fiamma slowly raised a clawed hand, timid green-yellow flames coiled lazily around her shoulders, and offered a tiny wave. Her fanged-mouth drew up at the corners in a pale shadow of one of her distinctive smiles.

Even stones couldn’t resist that smile, thought Alex. Even heartless, cruel stones.

“Hi,” she said, but it came out as a whisper, as if a higher tone would have ruined whatever moment she was sharing with this adorable flaming creature.

Thankfully the awkward moment was dissipated when Fiamma’s flames turned up a notch, and she waved her clawed hand quickly and her smile got bigger and bigger.

She hopped to the corner of the bed where a pile of clothes laid, and held up each item for Alex to check first. Alex shook her head good-naturedly, of course she was going to accept everything without a word.

Well, except _that_.

.

.

.

An extremely embarrassing ten minutes later, Alex was wearing blissfully clean but unfamiliar underwear and her dignity had been thoroughly and completely tossed out of the window. She couldn’t believe it that at 27 years old she could include ‘stripped bare by coworker’s (and crush) Anima in bed.’

Wait that sounded….

While her stupid brain was trying to shut down her train of thought as quickly as inhumanly possible, Fiamma happily led her to the bathroom in the short main corridor of the apartment. She had to honest to god hold back a moan when she washed her face and teeth with the newly unwrapped toothbrush.

It was a moniker of how badly her dignity fared, that she didn’t even attempt at stopping Fiamma when she hand-washed Alex’s underwear and threw it in the washing machine to rinse.

The humiliation didn’t stop her from being impressed at Fiamma’s masterfulness around home appliances.

She had never seen her mother’s Anima physically help her, although her father’s Anima sometimes manifested to hand him things.

Her mother’s Anima probably helped her in the workplace, she tried to mollified with a hint of guilt, before resentment for her mother’s strictness pushed the guilt off of a cliff.

Existing the bathroom, she took a deep breath, and entered the day area.

The living room contained old furniture, apart from the coffee table, on which a laptop rested. Beside the television was a small but impressive collection of books, but Alex didn’t take the time to read the titles as she turned towards the kitchen.

The kitchen of this apartment lacked a proper island like the one she had, but it made up in table space.

Alex’s eyes barely registered Maggie turned towards the burners because at a chair of the table sat an enormous Anima. It was thin and tall, ridiculously tall. It was clad in a long robe richly adorned with patterns, some non-sensical, some reminded her of celtic runes, some reminded her Chinese characters, more stylized, more ancient. They were very difficult to discern clearly since the robe was so dark gray it was black, and the patterns on it were a darker, glossy black.

The Anima had long, skeletal, dark grey arms that emitted a constant fog-like cloud of shadows. They ended in long, skeletal, dark gray hands folded neatly on its lap. The hands had more fingers than five, from her position Alex couldn’t see the end of its fingers, but they looked like they ended in something shinier, glossier, although still black.

The creature’s most interesting feature, by far, was the skull-shaped masked face. Alex wasn’t sure if the face was underneath the mask or if it was the mask, since its three eyes rested above the face, there was one slit for the nose, but it had no mouth.

On the Anima’s head rested a row of spiraling horns trailing shadows. Though they weren’t shaped exactly like a crown, their almost circular disposition demanded that they ought to be interpreted as such.

As if its appearance wasn’t bizarre enough, thicker shadows grew from its head, and it took Alex an extra second to realize that it was hair. It was straight, so long that it rested on its left shoulder in a neatly done braid, and it was interspersed with lightly shining beads, which were actually the only elements that hinted at colors in all of the creature’s looks.

Alex would have thought it was an unknown Anima, which was cause enough for panic, if it weren’t for a pull, in all of her body and mind, telling her that that being was the same bundle of shadows and strange warmth that she held tightly to her chest hours in a parking lot that stank of gunpowder and resounded with screams of anguish.

The last hints that the arcane creature sitting at Maggie’s kitchen table was her anima was the darkness whirling behind the masked face, and the unsettling white of its three eyes, that whispered of memories long forgotten, from the time when she looked up from her crib and tried to grab the bundle of shadows and eyes staring at her from above.

Alex later blamed on the shock for how she blurted out:

“Where the fuck did you get that robe?”

 

It was the pinnacle of all the weird shit that had happened to her in the last who-knew-how-many hours.

Her Anima kept staring at her like he did from the moment she’d noticed him, while Maggie turned towards her with a puzzled look, and fuck, Alex could have slapped herself if she weren’t paralyzed by a sudden burst of panic.

She didn’t think about Maggie. Fuck.

Her heartbeat started thrumming in her throat, wild and uncontained. When Maggie took a look around in puzzlement, she mentally begged whatever deity was out there that her Anima would take the clue and manifest to do some damage control.

Somebody must have heard her up there because as Maggie turned fully around, towards her kitchen table, she was startled and let out a feeble squeak.

“Puta mierda,” she muttered, the hand that held a mitten going straight to her chest.

Her Anima slowly turned towards Maggie, not with his body, but only with his head - that was honestly a touch creepy - and a familiar slow trail of shadows emerged from behind the lower edge of the mask.

“Yeah no, it’s fine, don’t sweat it man, just having a minor heart attack over here,” snapped Maggie.

Alex felt weirdly freaked out by the normalcy with which she replied to her Anima, but she also recalled that looking at Fiamma’s developed personality, Maggie was obviously fond of the general concept of chatting with Animas.

Alex slowly walked towards the creature as he spoke again but turned to stare at her.

“He says this is similar to his original form, back when you were born. He turned like this after the fight and he can’t seem to change back.”

Blurred memories from her infancy mingled with Maggie’s voice for a very disorienting few seconds.

“He?”

Maggie was startled so badly by the question that the fork she was using to prod at lunch loudly banged on the edge of the pan.

She looked up at Alex with a panicked expression, resembling the one she’d worn at the gym when Alex barreled into her. She looked so miserable that Alex had to fight the urge to walk up to her and hug her.

“I-I-…” as she stammered both Fiamma and her Anima said something and whatever they said, it seemed to ground Maggie a bit because she stopped gripping the fork as if her life depended on it.

“Fia-Fiamma talks about him,” she said in a small voice, wringing her hand around the long fork nervously.

“They seem to have struck a kind of friendship…”

Yeah, that was certainly a way to put it… mused Alex, staring at her Anima who stared right back at her. She wondered if he minded her inquisitive staring but couldn’t help herself. He looked… so majestic she was starting to feel a bit embarrassed about it all.

“Doesn’t he scare you?” she asked, but immediately regret it.

For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to detest her Anima as much as she used to before she got promoted to field agent.

Or maybe it hadn’t been the promotion that changed her, it was meeting Maggie and Fiamma. Since she saw her Anima interacting with Fiamma that day, he’d helped her, protected her, he’d fought for her and with her.

Sometimes, on some days, she needed to remind herself that she hated being a Vide, that even though it made no sense whatsoever, she thought he’d given her this ability and detested him for it, to the point of reducing ‘him’ to an impersonal ‘it.’

“Oh Danvers,” Maggie’s voice pulled her out of her musing, “It takes much more than Solferino to scare me.”

Alex lost herself in Maggie’s knowing smirk for a minute before she registered her words.

And then she proceeded in fighting the urge to cover her burning cheeks from view as Maggie blanched before her again.

“Oh my god-“ “Oh my god…”

Alex couldn’t fight the urge anymore, and she hid her face in her palms, rubbing them back and forth, hoping to go back in time to when she was 4 years old and shifting through a book about Gothic oddities around the world.

“I’m-I’m sorry. He just…said it, and…”

“Yeah I bet he loves humiliating the fuck out of me,” she murmured from behind her palms.

“…What?” she heard Maggie ask in confusion.

“It’s such a stupid name. Ugh. I was a kid okay, reading this weird book and found this super creepy page and started calling him that. I had no idea an Anima’s name is decided together, I was the clown of the class for weeks. Honestly. Of all the stupid creepy names-“

“Danvers!”                

 She pulled her palms away from her face both because Maggie sounded like it wasn’t the first time that she’d tried to call her, and because Fiamma’s unmistakeable chubby arms wrapped around her hips. It should have been shocking and worrying, to recognize another person’s by touch, thought Alex in the back of her mind, but since it was Fiamma, she couldn’t think of any other feeling than safety right now.

She looked down and yep, Fiamma had her face scrunched up against her hip. Not knowing what to do with her hands anymore, she lowered them slowly, and let her right fall lightly on Fiamma’s warm head.

She looked up to Maggie’s soft gaze before her Anima started talking again, startling Maggie out of her reverie.

“He said he’s heard a thousand names and more since you were a kid, but they don’t matter because…” Maggie’s shuffled timidly and endearingly before speaking up again. “…because you gave him his name and he likes it. He says it’s his name, it’s always been.”

Alex felt the fight seep out of her right then and there.

Fuck it, if her Anima preferred a horribly dorky name, it was his life.

Right on cue, her stomach declared that it had been way too fucking long since it last saw food and her laughter mingled with Maggie’s.

“Come on, I’m not re-heating everything again.”

Fiamma let go of her and Alex approached the table, thanking Maggie for the hospitality and apologizing for taking so long in the restroom. The kitchen table was decked with a deliciously smelling pasta and salad and Alex’s mouth watered when she recognized the smell of the salsa - spicy tuna melt.

The smell of good food made her spare a thought for Kara, when her Anima – Solferino – silently handed her her phone.

She looked into his white eyes, noticing that they floated above the mask and that the third eye was in fact a group of tiny eyes which pulsed as if in time with a heart beating, and which number was never the same. It pulsed and the eyes were 3, it pulsed, and the eyes were more than a dozen, it pulsed, and the were triple that, and so on.

After reassuring Kara that she’d just caught up on some much needed sleep after a long shift in the lab, she focused on the table and its occupants.

The table had four chairs, two for the humans and two for the Animas. Up close she noticed how strikingly different the Animas were. While Fiamma was chubby and short, Solferino was thin as a rack, and towering over them all.

She wanted to thank Solferino  for the day before, she wanted to say _thanks for fighting with me_ , but her curiosity about his current form overwhelmed her and she extended her hand, slowly, shaking, towards the edge of his mask.

He kept staring at her, utterly expressionless, but Alex trusted him to do something, grab her hand or duck out of the way, if he didn’t want to be touched. So she did.

The edge of his mask was ragged, but the rest of its surface was smooth and cool, although she touched a few inches of it, before a giddy sort of feeling overcame her and she had to retreat.

She looked up at his eyes again, noticing that they floated on a sort of ephemeral black cloth covering the upper half of his mask. From this close, the whirlwind shadows between his mask and his tunic were impossible to mistaken, that darkness had accompanied her since birth.

Before she could do something stupid like saying his name out loud for the first time after 23 years, or god forbid, before she tried to touch his hands or his robe or the lazy shadowy curls emitted from his body (she didn’t have time to sate her curiosity now!), she thanked Maggie for the food again and joined her, fighting back a pornographic moan when the delicious goodness hit her taste buds.

.

.

.

The sun sat low in the sky outside of the IDPU HQ.

It felt strange to be back in the quiet hum of the lab she had set up here with an selection of instruments from the DEO and from the NCPD’s stock. Sometimes she was back in that parking lot, the echoes of dozens of shots ringing in her eardrums.

Paradoxically, what didn’t feel strange was seeing her Anima sitting on the corner of one of the labs tables, his elongated figure so tall that he hunched his shoulders in order not to reach the roof of the room with his crown-like horns.

His shadows shuddered in excitement, probably mirroring her state of mind.

The results had just come in, they’d finally found another match to the Aegon element percentage of the Sandwick family massacre. The search for a match had been harder than expected, since the cases of violent deaths in which aliens were involved were on the rise, but thankfully it was now part of the procedure to take sample pretty much everything on the crime scene, so once the suspiciously similar cases had been spotted, it was a matter of requesting the environmental evidence and run the substance in the lab.

Maggie had been fundamental in finding the first match, since Lindsay hadn’t been sure that a previous case of the Intelligence Unit had involved aliens. The initial case pivoted on a series of brutal rapes by a serial offender. The exception to the bastard’s MO consisted in a couple of young women. The perpetrator had never assaulted two victims in close proximity before, and he had never failed to move the bodies after either. But the evidence of the crime scene and the perpetrator’s own later confession, revealed that he found them comatose and took advantage of them on the spot. The sample from the crime scene revealed an incredibly high concentration of the Aegon element.

The second match had just come from the samples in the parking lot. This one was easy, since Alex could tell that something decidedly _Anima_ had occurred in that place, so she ran the test for the Aegon element herself. And lo and behold. Freakingly high levels of it black on white right here.

She’d texted Maggie the news, so when she heard the door of the lab opening, she figured it was her.

But when she turned around, only decades of experience trying to blend in as a normal person prevented her from jumping in shock. All the unit members’ Animas were in her lab, and Fiamma was writing something beneath the lab’s whiteboard, underneath her formulas.

“What the fuck?”

Maggie’s voice focus her attention, but Maggie was looking at Fiamma, who turned around and said something, shuffling sheepishly on the spot.

Maggie hummed at whatever Fiamma said and turned to Alex.

“Is she bothering you? I can get her out of here.”

Fiamma scoffed at this and looked at Alex with big, imploring eyes. Alex had a hard time ignoring her and fighting the urge to go over and hug her and tell her that she was absolutely delighted by the fact that Fiamma trusted her to hold… what seemed like an Anima reunion in the lab.

“No no, it’s fine. I can’t hear her anyway.”

Fiamma said something to Maggie that made her frown.

“She said it’s something I should hear too. Do you mind if I stay a bit?”

“Absolutely not, here.” _Smooth,_ she mentally chided herself, she needed to train on not sounding like an eager puppy when Maggie asked her anything…

She pulled over a stool, making a show of checking if it was stable to cover the fact that she’s raised it higher than hers.

As soon as Maggie sat down beside her, Fiamma spoke to her.

“Ok, first. She says that there are other Animas here, they belong to our guys though so don’t worry.”

“Alright.”

Alex opened and closed her fists in nervousness on her thighs, then forced herself to stop. She had no idea what was going, so she figured she’d better keep her answers at a minimum and limit anything that conveyed nervousness, Maggie was a sharp detective after all.

The Animas talked to one another while she worked on keeping her gaze on Fiamma. Solferino shrunk himself until he was sitting on the table beside her and he nuzzled close to her shoulder, but even his closeness didn’t do much to calm her. She’d never been put into such a delicate situation before, one wrong move and somebody’s Anima could realize that she could see them, and they’d tell their human.

Fiamma briefly raised her hand, spoke and turned to write something on a corner of the board, underneath the words:

_Creepy birds – Anima meeting_

She wrote:

_Margaret Sawyer – Fiamma F – Humanoid – Active: Fire_

Alex had no idea what “Active: Fire” meant, but the thought of asking anything was far from her mind.

Fiamma told Maggie something and Maggie turned to her.

“Okay, they’re going to introduce themselves now, I think. Do you know about the Elemental theory related to Animas?”

“Well, I know Elemental Animas are common…” She mumbled, not meeting Maggie’s eyes, both because she was closer than she’d expected, damn it, she should have placed the stool farther away, and because this tiny bit of knowledge came only by her own experience, in fact she knew next to nothing about Elemental Animas.

“Alright so technically Animas are the manifestation of the person’s soul and the spiritual energy of the planet right? But as Animas develop they draw power, power as in, let’s see, life energy, they draw their energy from certain elements, like fire or earth.

There are two categories of elemental Animas, the active type and the passive type. Only the Animas belonging to the active category can control the energy of their element, while the passive type just draws energy you know, passively.”

“Makes sense.”

Next, Maggie related what Fiamma had written on the board, apart from her own name, which puzzled Alex but she had sworn to herself not to draw attention to herself in any way, so she kept quiet about that.

Fiamma kept on writing:

_/heart/: Writing. Reading. Breakfast cuddles!_

Maggie didn’t relate nor commented on the line, so Alex kept quiet again.

Next, Vasquez’ Anima said something, and Fiamma responded, and next Moon’s Anima said something, and Fiamma replied again, pointing at Alex. And then, all the creatures’ eyes turned towards her and Alex’s skin prickled in fear. Did Fiamma? No… Fiamma would never betray her like that.

She was about to ask Maggie what was going on, when Halstead’s bat-like Anima flew to a microscope, perched there, and moved the tip of its wing to over its mouth, staring at Alex all the while.

Whatever it said behind the cover of its wing must have been insulting, because several Animas turned to him in indignation and even Maggie let out an enraged “Hey!” but every reaction was halted by a rumbling sound, deep and raucous, unlike anything Alex had heard before. It sounded like a monster clearing its throat, straight out of the best horror movie. It echoed in her chest like the beat of a night club and it made her palms sweat in apprehension. It was a sound that didn’t belong to the human plane of existence.

Then, a deep, masculine, raucous voice resounded so close to Alex’s ears that it was like it was hissed directly into her earlobe.

**Excuse me?**

The voice sounded harsh and cutting, with an incredible amount of hissing sounds in such a short phrase. A trail of shadows appeared in her peripheral vision and she dug her fingers into her own thighs until they hurt, but nope, this was reality, and that trail of shadows just came out from under Solferino’s mask.

She didn’t turn around though, something, something resembling fear, made her stare at Fiamma like it was her religion.

All the other Animas stared at Solferino, absolutely terrified and they all stepped back when the rumbling voice resounded again.

**I beg your pardon?**

Alex had never heard someone sound so murderous in a simple four words sentence, but Solferino, huddled against her shoulder, his shadows whirling lazily around his robe, had just managed to convey his preternatural fury without a shadow of a doubt.

Fiamma and Lindsay’s Anima said something to Halstead’s Anima and he startled from his perch of the microscope, he was the only one who didn’t retreat, seemingly paralyzed. But now he bowed repeatedly towards Solferino, saying something and with a fluttering of wings he resumed his perch on Lidnsay’s Anima, who scoffed at it.

Whatever the bat-like Anima said, the rumbling stopped abruptly, and the whole room seemed to breathe again.

“What the f-“ Maggie said beside her, but Fiamma erupted in a burst of flames, glaring at her, and what she said made Maggie promptly fall quiet.

Alex squirmed under the collective gaze of everybody in the room, then Vasquez’ Anima hopped on the spot, raised one of its tiny front limbs, said something, and thank goodness the focus of the room shifted to it.

Fiamma wrote on the board:

_Christina Vasquez – Sharp M – Beast – A:Metal_

_/heart/: Crowded playgrounds. Patrols. Board games._

Then, every Anima spoke at turn, and all watched Fiamma writing on the board:

_Shadow Moon (actual name!) – Kokuo F – Beast – P:Earth_

_/heart/: Three-legged dogs. Canyons. Baseball._

 

_Kimberly Burgess – March-hare F – Beast – P:Metal_

_/heart/: Color-coding. Diners. Homemade cookies._

 

_Jay Halstead – Noize M – Beast – P:Air (specialization: sounds)_

_/heart/: Classical music. Musicals. Winter dawn._

_Erin Lindsay – Prince M – Humanoid – A:Plants (specialization: poisons)_

_/heart/: Riverside. Noir movies. Garden magazines._

 

_Lucy Lane – Avalanche F – Humanoid – A:Water (specialization: ice)_

_/heart/: Figure skating. Shooting range. Bird-watching._

Maggie dutifully related what the Animas said, probably because Fiamma’s handwriting was a bit slow, but Alex didn’t mind the repetition. In the end, Maggie turned to her, her eyes darting somewhere behind Alex’s shoulders.

“Do you want to introduce yourself too, Solfe?”

Again, Alex thought the safest choice for her was keeping her eyes firmly on Fiamma, since she couldn’t tell if Solferino had manifested or not. Maggie’s eyes were wandering aimlessly behind her so she figured he wasn’t visible at all. A creature of his stature was very hard to miss after all.

Alex quietly braced herself for that rumbling voice to erupt again, but instead she saw the slow, familiar trail of black whirls rise up in the hair from her peripheral vision.

Again, Maggie related and Fiamma wrote down:

 _Alexandra_ (she groaned at that) _Danvers_ _– Solferino M – Humanoid – Shadows_

“Alexandra Danvers, Solferino, male, he’s in the Humanoid category but possibly a Deus type, and his element… well...”

“What? What does that mean?”

When Maggie didn’t answer immediately, Alex turned to her.

Maggie’s expression was pinched in a frown, confused and unsure, and her eyes were searching something in Alex’s, gauging her for something. For what, Alex couldn’t begin to fathom.

“Sawyer?”

“Yeah, it’s just… It’s something rare, you know, it’s all theoretical.”

Maggie pinched her lips between her fingers, a nervous tick that she didn’t do often, so Alex started to worry.

Rare how? Theoretical how? What did it mean, what had Solferino revealed?

She looked at Fiamma but actually inspected her colleagues’ Animas and their reactions. They were all talking about something, debating, going by their focused expressions and gesticulation, so she felt it safe to whisper to Maggie:

“ _Theoretically_ how? What does it mean?”

Maggie shrugged once, shifting and looking at the machines around the lab, but the nonchalance of the gesture was voided by her serious tone.

“Animas are born when we’re born and they die when we die, right? But it’s _theorized,_ okay, no Anima has ever walked up to scholars or experts and told them this – since Animas are the spiritual energy of the planet, and this never actually dies because there are always Animas at any point in time anywhere in the world – it’s theorized that when we die part of our Anima will be reborn in future kids’ Animas.

There are stories, mostly legends, claiming that some Animas die and are reborn so many times that they eventually become conscious of this cycle. And this shows up in the element from which these Animas draw their energy. Darkness.”

There was a pause in which Alex thought that she ought to be more surprised, but she actually wasn’t.

She’s always known her Anima was different from all others, she’d seen it everyday of her life, comparing him to the other creatures.

“But I think it’s all bullshit actually,” continued Maggie. “I think people in ancient times saw manifested Animas all covered in shadows and relegated them to a category of their own. What if the darkness is an honest-to-go legit element like all the others?”

“Mmh. And what about that word?”

“What word?”

“Deus? It sounds Latin.”

“It is. It means god, godlike, divinity. See what I was saying about ancient people and crazy theories? They thought these Animas were monsters but called them gods? And it’s still called the Deity category, but as I said, it’s mostly a footnote in textbooks now.”

Alex hummed again as Solferino spoke again and Fiamma hurriedly wrote on the board.

“Though that voice was something else..”

Alex didn’t reply to Maggie’s remark, forcing herself to relax and focus on the whiteboard.

 _Alexandra_ _Danvers_ _– Solferino M – Humanoid – Shadows_

_/heart/: Smell of labs. Alien biology studies. Desert sunsets._

Alex tried to ignore the soft snort of “Nerd” coming from Maggie and focused on something Noize told Fiamma, and Fiamma’s subsequent enthusiastic remark.

Sharp, March-Hare and Avalanche pitched in and Fiamma was even happier and hopped to Solferino, joyful and uncaring, and extended her fist for a bro fist bump.

Which Solferino proceeded to stare at.

Alex realized then that he probably had zero idea about bro fists were. She herself couldn’t remember the last time someone tried to bump their fist with hers in friendship.

Kara was all hugs after she’d learned how to control her strength, whereas almost all of Alex’s classmates hated her because of her skipping grades, most of her college mates did too because her grades remained good even during her drunken phase, and at the DEO there hadn’t been much bro fist bumping going on at all.

“It’s a bro fist,” she said, earning Solferino’s attention. Only his head moved when he turned and the creepy effect was more pronounced this close that it had been at Maggie’s, a few hours before.

His absolute focus on her for something so dorky as a bro first bump was strangely endearing though.

“Close your hand in a fist, and bump it lightly against hers.”

She raised her hand and made a show of forming her fist, then kept it raised as a skeletal arm appeared from the folds of Solferino’s robe and a long, skeletal hand branched out from the stick-like arm.

This close, Alex noticed that Solferino’s parched, dark gray skin was adorned by sophisticated, lucid black patterns that gleamed under the led light bulbs. He had no claws to speak of, but his fingertips were pointed and slightly curved downward.

Eventually, Solferino closed his fist and held it out for Fiamma to bump enthusiastically. Then she said something and turned her fist towards Alex, who tried not to smile too stupidly as she reciprocated.

She ducked her head, looking at but unseeing, her dark military-issued trousers, forcing herself not to look towards Maggie, since she had an inkling that the brunette was smirking beside her and Maggie’s smile would be way too much for her to handle now.

Then she noticed Solferino’s fist entering her line of vision and she looked up at his unblinking white eyes for a moment before she exchanged a bro fist bump with him too.

His skin was refreshingly cool and dry, and she kept nudging her fist against his because she liked the way his absurdly long skeletal fingers dwarfed hers, and because something in her chest was still constricted painfully at the thought of Maggie having witnessed the camaraderie she shared with Fiamma so closely.

She had a feeling that Solferino knew exactly why she was lingering and he was indulging her, sighing at her, and most probably asking himself why she was being such a schoolgirl with a crush, could she get her act together, god, what a _nerd_.

After he slowly retracted his fist back into the folds of his robe, she felt slightly calmer and looked back at the white board where Kokuo was doodling a bird with a marker in his mouth and Fiamma was writing furiously, while several Animas were engaged in a multi-directional conversation.

“They’re discussing yesterday’s events,” said Maggie in a quiet tone and Alex leaned back against the lab counter to watch the meeting unfold.

After quite a lot of debating, a few muttered comments from Maggie, and a few uncertain questions directed at Solferino too, Fiamma had filled two columns titled “Creepy Birds.”

On top of one column she’d written “Hard facts” and on top of the other there was the word “Hypothesis.”

The “Hard Facts” listed:

_Felt weaker_

_Disorientation_

_Loss of balance_

_Visible to humans and Animas_

_Can touch humans_

While the “Hypothesis” side consisted of:

_Can hurt Animas_

_Can hurt humans_

_Energy absorption_

_Most likely alien_

_Invisible to humans and Animas? / Advanced stealth abilities?_

_Hurt by bullets / Slowed down by bullets – unclear_

_Hurt / Slowed down by Animas – very likely_

At last, Prince said something, then all the Animas looked between him and Fiamma, who raised her flaming fists in the air and enthusiastically said something, which caused Maggie to groan in embarrassment.

Alex saw Solferino leaning in more closely on her side until his mask was almost resting on her shoulder.

“Sawyer?”

“Mh? Oh right. Noize congratulated Fiamma on her display of strength yesterday and she said that it was because that was the power of mates.”

Upon hearing these words, Alex’s heart plummeted to the ground. She remembered about Animas’ mates. Those child stories she used to adore were all about princes and princesses falling in love and getting married and being very happy for all their lives because their Animas recognized the other person’s Anima as a worthy mate and their bond was strong and steadfast.

Fuck, of course Fiamma already had a mate. It was probably one of Maggie’s exes. Could it have been the Anima of the pretty blonde from a few weeks ago? Who knew, maybe Maggie had started seeing that woman after they went home together that night at the pub.

Whoever Fiamma deemed worthy of her human was probably a gorgeous woman who felt proud and secure in her sexuality, who knew how to love normally, without wanting to give all of themselves to the other person, who knew where she wanted her life to go, who knew that she’s Maggie happy.

Fiamma’s mate was surely the Anima of a well-adjusted, stable person who wasn’t afraid about spending adulthood alone and was certainly somebody who didn’t live in fear of society turning her into a lab experiment.

Solferino’s shadows started to thin out and stretch, until the corners of the her vision were engulfed in a slowly spiraling mist.

It would be alright, she thought. Thanks to Fiamma and Maggie she’d started to trust Solferino more, she was even back to using his name (that dorky name!) after so many years. Whoever Fiamma liked, she was clearly happy with them, and Alex was happy about that. She needed to be, for the sake of her sanity.

She slowly emerged from her musings to find that everybody’s attention seemed to have shifted on Prince and Noize. Maggie and all the Animas were snickering as Fiamma wrote:

_Noize /heart/ Prince !!Mates power!!_

Oh. So Lindsay and Halstead _were_ together. She wondered how _that_ had worked out since they belonged to the same unit.

And she wondered about Lindsay and Halstead just out of sheer curiosity, obviously, there was no other reason involved _at all_ , nothing to see here, moving on.

“Well, guess the meeting’s over.”

Maggie’s low voice pulled her out of her thoughts and she noticed that all the Animas apart from Fiamma started making their way back to their humans through the walls of the lab.

She shifted, turning towards Maggie but was careful to keep Fiamma in her peripheral vision, especially her claws, since she was still holding the marker.

Noticing her movement, Maggie shifted too and offered a small smile.

“So. Do you want to review what we’ve got over some food?”

The question puzzled Alex, since she couldn’t say what brought it on. Her expression was mirrored on Maggie’s face for a moment before Alex saw Fiamma approaching them and saying something to Maggie, which startled her.

“Oh. So sorry, I forgot to say that the these guys were here to put together what they knew about what happened yesterday, asking us if we can make sense of any of it.”

Alex contemplated the scribbles on the white board for a moment.

“Why us?”

Beside her, Maggie shrugged and smirked at Fiamma, who was shuffling on her feet and looking between the two humans, absolutely enthusiastic.

“Why me most likely. I’m pretty sure this menace here bullied them all into this meeting.”

What followed was a one-sided (for Alex) frantic discussion between Maggie and Fiamma.

She could only hear Maggie’s side, all sassiness (“Oh yeah?” “Uh-hu, sure, with your fists more likely” “Yeah, didn’t think so”) and her laughter, but she focused on Fiamma’s expressions, almost unwillingly, since she was absolutely enthralled by how the person and the Anima interacted with one another.

Maggie spoke as if she was speaking with another human, and so many complex expressions danced on Fiamma’s face and in her body language: frustration, mockery, jokes, relief, joy.

Alex had already been shocked by the Anima’s incredibly developed personality, but seeing Fiamma talking with Maggie, the flaming creature’s personality became self-evident, a logical consequence. Of course she had developed such a strong individuality, it was thanks to Maggie and her easy way of communicating.

“So, Danvers?”

Maggie’s question startled her and she tried to act as if she wasn’t staring at the heated discussion unfolding beside her by shrugging.

It wasn’t her best moment, she hadn’t the foggiest about what she was shrugging at, but it saved her from more embarrassing Kara-like remarks such as “huh?” or “um…”

“I’ll choose the place and you can follow me there?”

“Will do,” she replied easily, relieved that she got back on track. They were talking about grabbing dinner together and talking about what transpired during the Animas’ meeting.

For a few moments they stood there, leaning on the lab counter. Alex found that she missed the natural light of the sunset, since Maggie’s skin tone was dulled by the harsh led lights. Her complexion, her hair, her eyes, her smile were at their best when they were inundated by the colors of the sunset.

Something made Maggie tilt her head slightly and smile, an amused glint lit up her dark eyes, and her shoulders relaxed, sloping downwards with twin smooth curves. Her arms relaxed too, her shoulder holster shifted around her chest.

But Alex caught that movement only with her bottom peripheral vision. She was always careful not to look at Maggie’s body too closely, since her cardio was _good_ , but not _that_ good. She couldn’t bear the thoughts that assaulted her at the most random moments (yes, even in the bullpen in the middle of an update about a case. She was so _so_ fucked).

Alex braced herself under Maggie’s scrutiny and in front of her smile. She pulled her muscles taught, as if ready for sparring, but it was all for naught. She was powerless in front of the painful squeeze in  her chest at the sight of Maggie’s smile, there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

Since Maggie was a normally joyful person, and smiled quite often, Alex had hoped that she would eventually work up some kind of immunity to her sunny smile, especially now that they worked together.

But nope, she still got her breath knocked right out of her as if she was back on day one.

“Danvers.”

“ _Yes_.”

Her reply had been absolutely automatic and her hasty, serious, loud tone had been out of place in contrast to Maggie’s low, easy call, but she couldn’t have replied differently even if she’d wanted to.

Maggie’s called her and she said yes, it had been almost instinctual. What that said about Alex’s feelings, she didn’t want to linger on. She chose not to acknowledge the mishap and held Maggie’s amused gaze in stride.

“You texted me about some match you found?”

Damn, Alex had completely forgotten about that.

Feeling the heat rising to her cheeks, she quickly turned around and looked for the pages she needed, hoping that the stupid led lights weren’t showing off her blush.

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	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Maggie check out a mixed-species diner in town.  
> The ideal sentence would have been "Alex and Maggie go out on a date while they check out a mixed-species diner in town," but I'm afraid poor Alex's nerves won't be able to cope with that.  
> For now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is throwing some curve balls at me at the moment and inspiration is slow coming. Plus, I had to go and get myself bogged down with deeply emotional dialogues that make writing very awkward for me.  
> Many, no infinite thanks to TheAwkwardLonelyBear for being an awesome beta-reader! I truly don't deserve them.
> 
> A final note about the content of this chapter: I'm probably going to lose several if not most readers with the way this turned out. In Canon, when Alex spoke about not liking intimacy, I was thrilled because I thought I was watching an asexual character. Then Sanvers happened and I was elated because lesbians are the best, but I found the transition between "badass woman who does just fine without a sexual relationship" to lesbian hot scenes a bit jarring. So here's my take on that.
> 
> Many thanks to all the queer people I met. Even though you're not reading this, thank you for offering endless support whenever I needed to talk about stuff.

**Bestĭa:** _Lat._  
_bestiă, bestiae, n, f, I._

Beast, creature, animal.

The original Latin name of the Beast category of Animas.

 

Animas belonging to this category resemble wild animals as opposed to human beings.

It is by far the most highly populated category of Animas at any given time in the world. The most recent census in 70 countries has disclosed that 72% of the adult population declared their Anima to belong to the Beast category.

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.

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Alex was grateful that Maggie had accompanied her home after lunch that day.

After having slept in Maggie’s bed, worn Maggie’s clothes (complete with underwear), and after having had lunch with Maggie, the prospect of having dinner together left her head spinning.

So thank goodness, Alex thought, that she’d had some time alone before the shift ended, so she could regain her composure after the impromptu meeting of the Animas.

Maggie had a specific pub in mind since she wanted to check in with one of her alien informants.

Alex knew this, and she knew that they would be talking about work a fair amount of time, but still, she had to convince her mind (and her heartbeat) to calm the fuck down and stop conjuring date-like scenarios. Yes, she relished being in Maggie’s presence and yes, she was elated at the prolonged period of time that she spent with her in the past 48 hours, but she needed to get a grip on herself.

If Maggie was to notice her feelings, Alex was sure that she would certainly recoil from them, maybe not in disgust, but surely she would feel betrayed. The blossoming friendship that Alex had painstakingly cultivated with her would get crushed in the blink of an eye, and Alex hated her own feelings because of this.

She slowed down behind Maggie’s bike on the outskirts of the city center, thanking god for Fiamma, who sat behind Maggie on the bike, and so covered the woman’s butt.

Alex was sure that that would have been too much for her poor confused brain, and it would have gone twenty thousand leagues under the gutter.

 _Seriously Maggie, give me a break,_ she mentally pleaded, hoping that a benevolent deity would understand her pain and suffering, as she strangled her thoughts before they developed even further.

She chuckled when she noticed that Maggie had her same MO about parking in the city at night. Under every circumstances, park your bike under a street light and in the scope of a functioning surveillance camera. Of course the perks of this method was that one needed to be in the know about which cameras were always functioning and which were there for placebo effect.

“Did you check the surveillance grid of the city when you moved here?” she couldn’t help but ask when she switched off the engine and hopped off beside Maggie.

Alex had heard Maggie laugh several times, but it was still the best sound she’d heard, every time, especially if she was close enough to see the appearance of the wrinkles around Maggie’s eyes, and her deepening dimples.

“Hell yeah I did! This baby’s old but it’s still my first bike. I bought it with my early paychecks.”

Alex had bought her bike with scholarship money but she didn’t want to steer the conversation to her education, since there laid the risk that Maggie would ask her about her courses, her pastimes, her friends, and she didn’t want Maggie to know how much of a recluse she had been before her party-all-night crash course. So she asked what kind of jobs Maggie had done before the academy.

“Oh, all sorts of things. Helped out in farms, bodegas and in a couple of the few hostels Blue Springs has to offer. Anything to get out of that hellhole with my own money,” she spat out with vehemence, and a tense silence accompanied them as they walked in the alley towards the pub.

Suddenly Maggie got startled because of something she saw behind Alex’s shoulders and Alex’s hand flew to her gun holster immediately, but then Maggie let out an embarrassed groan.

“Fiamma not in public, please.”

But it was too late, and Fiamma ran to hug her own human tightly. Maggie was shorter than Alex, and while Fiamma reached Alex’s waist, Fiamma’s face was squished on Maggie’s breasts now, and Alex had to duck her head quickly, feeling heat rise up her neck to her cheeks.

From the corner of her eyes she saw Maggie’s arms engulfing the fiery Anima in a tight hug, her eyes  scrunched into a pained expression, so she turned around altogether.

By doing so, she noticed that Solferino had climbed down from her shoulders and had risen to his full height. He kept his form shrunk inside the IDPU offices, since his skull-shaped mask had looked bigger than the rest of his body compared to his current proportions. Now he could stand proudly, unhindered by any ceiling, and Alex roughly calculated his height to be double hers, at least.

She blew out a slow breath, adjusted her scarf and hoped that she gave a good impression of trying to take a peek of the stars when she looked into Solferino’s eyes. She tried to unearth new memories of those eyes from her infancy, but they were mere flashes, foggy and indistinct.

Solferino’s eyes were so luminous that they illuminated the wall of the closest building with a faint, shimmering reflection, clearer than the light of the street lamps.

Alex idly wondered if it was normal for other Vides to see Animas in so fucking clear 4K HD.

Solferino’s mask was expressionless but Alex knew, as she had known when he was a shapeless mass of black nothingness and shadows, that he was calm, as he kept staring at her intently.

She was so intent in staring up at her Anima, that she jumped out of her skin when a familiar warmth enveloped her waist from behind.

“Oh my god, Fiamma,” muttered Maggie in a strangled tone.

“It’s fine, she’s fine,” she immediately reassured, letting her hands rest on Fiamma’s arms around her hips. The creature’s warmth seeped through her leather biker gloves and she smiled at the sensation.

Then Fiamma moved away, ignored Maggie’s plead to stop manifesting in the middle of the street as she sauntered towards Solferino, said something, and was promptly rewarded by Solferino bending down and shrinking until he was only slightly taller than her. Then, he expanded his robe until Fiamma could pull a large and long veil of dark, ephemeral fabric, curling it around her shoulders like a shawl.

The usual flames that she emitted from her arms either died under the black material or Fiamma put them out herself, as they were no longer visible. Only a translucent orange shimmer, from Fiamma’s own body, bled through the black fabric.

Tucked away in this manner, Fiamma turned towards the two women and enthusiastically held up a victory sign with two curvy, chubby claws, speaking enthusiastically all the while.

Solferino seemed content to simply stare at her, expressionless, and their uncanny scene was too much for Alex, who had to press her fingers over her upper lip to smolder her chortles of laughter.

“She’s so embarrassing,” murmured Maggie coming up beside her.

“She’s sweet. Can I take a picture?”

Maggie turned around with raised eyebrow and curved lips.

“if you want to keep a picture of a poorly illuminated piece of blank wall at night… Sure Danvers, knock yourself out.”

Despite Maggie’s joking tone, even under the crappy light of the street lamps Alex could notice the darkening blush of her cheeks. Unbidden, Alex’s traitorous mind conjured up the thought that, well, if Alex were Maggie’s… girlfriend… she could press her lips to that darker patch of skin to discover what a blush would taste like.

You know… for science.

Instead, she averted her gaze again and took a picture of the two dorky Animas. Animas weren’t visible in pictures or in movies, even when they manifested, but Alex, most likely because of her Omne-Vide nature, could still see them all clearly. When she took the picture with her phone she swore to herself that she would treasure that photo for the rest of her life. Even if life drew her and Maggie apart, she would keep this image of Solferino and sweet, joyful Fiamma, who befriended her despite the dreadful appearance of her Anima.

Yes, she would treasure the picture because of her friendship with Fiamma… and not also because Fiamma looked like Solferino’s bride with his robe enveloping her like that… her traitorous thoughts whispered as she created backup upon backup of the picture.

“I forgot to tell you something,” said Maggie as she turned and resumed walking towards the end of the alley. “Your Anima’s a _badass_.”

Alex ducked her head, not knowing what to say after all the horrible things she’d thought about him until so very recently, but she was immensely pleased at the compliment. Noticing her silence, Maggie turned around for a moment, probably saw her flustered hesitation and laughed, the sound of it reverberating in the solitary, chilly night.

“First yesterday and now today. You know, in the lab? I have no idea what he said to that Noize guy, but I bet he was his usually polite and badass self.”

Alex stopped abruptly at Maggie’s words and Maggie advanced another couple of steps before she noticed the absence of the sound of Alex’s footsteps beside her, and she glanced at Alex in question.

 “What?”

At her question Maggie frowned and repeated the question back to her.

“You didn’t hear him during that meeting?”

Maggie’s frown deepened in confustion.

“Of course I did, but we’re talking about that strange rumble he did when Halstead’s Anima was being an asshole right?”

Alex had gleaned in on the fact that Halstead’s Anima had said something unsavory, but now she had confirmation, she made a mental note to ask Maggie later. In the meantime, she nodded.

“That was like… what Solferino said, whatever language he used, it wasn’t understandable. There were sounds, sure, but it was something… It was something out of Lord of the Rings okay. And both Solfe and Fiamma are saying that humans are not supposed to understand that, by he way.”

Coming up beside Maggie, Solferino and Fiamma stared at her too. Fiamma’s astonished expression was as clear as day, and while Solferino didn’t have an expression per se, Alex had an inkling that he was flabbergasted too.

Alex’s brains stuttered for a moment, and the familiar resentment at being different re-emerged. It was resentment at being not only a Vide, but a non-Audite who, for once in her life, understood an Anima. Only, ironically, to be told that just wasn’t supposed to have happened.

Alex crushed the resentment quickly though. She detested Solferino for years, condemning him for something that part of her. So what if Solferino gave her this ability? He was part of her, he was a piece of her Self, of her soul a more religious person would say. And she needed to cope with it, at the least.

Instead, she was left with an uncomfortable, awkward feeling of having said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and coupled with the fact that now Maggie thought she was weird and creepy. If only she took some time to try and communicate with Solferino and tell him that she understood what he said earlier. But regret was stupid and useless, she needed to face the present now.

Though nothing stopped her from squirming at the thought that Maggie probably saw her under a different light now.

She opened her mouth to diverge from the topic, ask what Noize  had said, when Solferino and Fiamma simultaneously whipped their heads towards the end of the alley. Instinctively, as Alex turned towards the same direction, her fingers were already unzipping her jacket to expose her gun holster.

There, near the corner at the end of the alley, stood a lone Anima.

For a moment, Alex’s mind was in complete disarray.

It was a testament to how highly wound up she still was from the day before that she’d reacted so quickly to Solferino’s and Fiamma’s alarm. And she didn’t even know if they were still manifest, fuck. Maybe they had talked and then disappeared, and she was supposed to be alone with Maggie in the middle of the alley and it just wasn’t normal for somebody to suddenly turn around, gun ready, and stare at nothing.

There was also the fact that she had to be more careful because other Animas could notice that she looked at them directly and they would tell their humans, or their aliens.

In the end, she fought against her every instinct as she usually did when Animas behaved awkwardly or alarmingly, and she played with the hem of her jacket, trying to hide the fact that she opened it in such a sudden movement, and averted her gaze from the end of the alley, where the Anima stood, staring at them.

“Danvers?” whispered Maggie, tension palpable in her tone, and fuck, Maggie was probably so suspicious of her now.

“Nothing, just some trick of the light.”

She tried to keep her tone light and shrugged, though the tension still permeated her muscles. Then the unknown Anima, a red-colored egg cut in two with some sort of limbs sliding out from the cut, seemed to be done staring at them and floated back towards the wall.

In the blink of an eye Maggie had her gun drawn and a thin trail of shadows stretched from Solferino straight to the Anima, pinning it down to the asphalt.

“Cover,” she called, drawing her own gun, and Maggie seamlessly spun and walked backwards with her towards the Anima. Solferino advanced by Maggie’s side, while Fiamma circumnavigated her human and walked up by Alex’s side, and in that moment she felt immensely grateful and protective of her perfect teammates.

Advancing towards the Anima, Alex momentarily fantasized about telling Maggie that she asked for cover not because she particularly wanted to take charge, she was more than happy being entrusted with Maggie’s back, but it was because, being a Vide, she could spot threats that Maggie couldn’t see and assess their level of threat before they’d hurt anybody (before they’d hurt her).

“Identify yourself,” she ordered the Anima calmly as Maggie kept her six beside her.

The Anima said something and Maggie dutifully translated.

“She said she thought we’d be here to hurt them.”

“Who’s them? Who sent you?”

The Anima replied but before Maggie could rely the message, Solferino’s shadowy whip slammed the Anima against the wall and wriggled his shadows tighter around her egg-like body, and suddenly, that other-worldly rumbling tone Alex had heard in the lab resounded in the alley.

**I suggest answering her questions truthfully or I’ll pluck your extremities one by one.**

Maggie shivered beside her and Fiamma added a remark of her own which startled the Anima’s cream-colored eyes out of her panic. After a pregnant minute, a tiny mouth full of tiny fangs appeared in the slit of the egg-like shell.

“She says the pub there’s an alien pub nearby. Since many police check-ups have turned violent in alien-friendly bars and they know that members of the police force go around in pairs, they’re afraid we’re here to arrest them or hurt them. So the bartender set her out on lookout. She’s supposed to report any human-looking people who come in pairs so they can be ready to flee.”

Maggie turned around then, holstered her gun and took her badge out and showed it to the Anima. She held the badge near Fiamma, so it was illuminated by the light she emitted, so Alex guessed that all three Animas were manifest then.

“Alright. I’m detective Maggie Sawyer from the NCPD, this is agent Alex Danvers from the DEO, we’re part of the new task force that handles cases involving aliens. A couple days ago an alien informant of mine, she goes by Dixie, gave me an address, only said it was an alien friendly place, maybe I could make some more friends there. I asked my partner to come with me to browse the place. That’s it. No arrests, no check-ups, no shootings. We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

At a nudge of Maggie’s elbow Alex holstered her gun, but still kept the lookout right and left in the alley. She handed it to Maggie, she was very good at talking down Animas. Alex wasn’t sure she could talk down people, let alone Animas.

The creature said something and Maggie replied:

“That’s why I’m telling you all this. If you go back in there and alert them, they’re going to be wary and on the defensive, and that’s not a good basis to start a peaceful evening. Because, again, that’s we’re here for. Check out if anybody wants to be an informant, that means offering information that can be useful in cases for money by the way, and drink something and maybe play some pool or darts or whatever. Alright? I’m asking you to go back in there and don’t say anything about us. And when we come in, don’t point us out to your human. Or alien.”

Alex kept her position as lookout even as Solferino’s voice grumbled again, making her shiver.

**I strongly suggest following her advice.**

Alex fought the urge to check what was going on, trusting Maggie, Solferino and Fiamma to handle it, and when Maggie breathed out an ‘alright’ she turned to find a blank wall and no whips of shadows in sight.

She turned to Maggie.

“Shall we?”

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.

.

In front of the pub Maggie put her hand on hers as Alex moved to open the door. Now that they both had put their biker gloves away, Alex was suddenly subjected to the Maggie’s small, full-on warm hand and her mind stuttered and died and she had to reboot it manually.

After her brain came back online, she looked up in apologetic, dark chocolate eyes.

“I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into this mess, Danvers. It was stupid of me, thinking that it would be nice to take you an alien-friendly place so you could get to know some folks, maybe start a network of your own as I did on the streets. I didn’t mean to-“

“I know.”

Maggie searched her eyes for the truth, and after a few apprehensive moments, she nodded.

“Okay.”

“And Sawyer?”

“Mh?”

“Don’t call yourself stupid in front of me again or I’ll ask Fiamma to kick your ass later.”

And that is how Alex and Maggie stepped into a pub full of defensive aliens grinning and snickering and nudging each other playfully.

The pub was abuzz with clearly-humans, clearly-aliens, and anybody’s-guess, although the aliens’ team beat the humans 5 to 1 in terms of sheer numbers. Not that there were sides here. Humans and aliens seemed to mingle fairly seamlessly in and out of the diner area, on the small dance floor and around the pool tables.

It was fairly late, so there were more couples swaying gently to the sound of a jazz band in the corner than in the diner area.

Alex struggled with a mix of feelings of excitement and tension in the middle of so many unknown alien species, so she channeled all the focus into browsing the Animas until she spot the one from the alley. She was right beside the bartender, so at least she had been truthful about something.

Then, she stepped in stride beside Maggie and her body went on autopilot, or it was probably the adrenaline and all the Animas, aliens and humans around, because her hand hovered on Maggie’s lower back as if an hostile was about to pop out of the staring aliens and humans around them at any given moment.

However, as they approached the counter, she noticed that none of the nearby Animas looked hostile towards them. Most were intimidated by Solferino, as usual, but many others looked at them curiously or even with tentative, friendly smiles.

“Hey, what can I get you?” said the bartender jovially.

“Beer for me, and-“

Alex opened her mouth to speak, when a pang of hunger shot through her stomach and in the moment she prayed that the fading song would last a few more seconds, the musicians stopped abruptly and the bartender raised her eyebrows at her stomach’s order.

“-and a house menu for you dear?”

Alex debated with herself whether she preferred burying her face in her palms, punching her guts for having been corrupted by the example of Kara’s bottomless hunger, or elbowing Maggie in the side to stop her snickering.

In the end she pinched Maggie’s side and smothered her smile at the yelp she made while she addressed the woman at the counter.

“No thank you, just beer.”

“A club sandwich? They’re really good, not blowing my own horn, I don’t make them. And don’t worry, kitchen’s still open.”

No matter how much she shook her head, cheeks still burning with the memory of the noise her stomach had made, her fate was sealed, the woman was having none of it.

“I insist. I can’t let you go around famished. Let’s say it’s in the job description.”

“Okay, okay. Just a club sandwich.”

“One for me too please,” quipped in Maggie sending her a dimpled smile as Fiamma kept on laughing behind her.

“You don’t need to eat with me if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just trying the place’s food for the next time I’m in the ‘hood.”

They made their way to a table snickering about ‘hoods and Maggie’s ridiculousness, but Maggie’s smile disappeared when she sat down and swiveled her gaze around the pub.

“Mierda,” she whispered snappily.

“What?”

Swiveling her head around she noticed that a purple-skinned woman (woman-looking?) humanoid alien was navigating through the crowd towards them. Her Anima, a sort of chubby worm with its head under by a hood-like foam, didn’t look antagonistic. Fiamma looked wary, while Solferino didn’t even bother with gazing their way, so Alex avoided shifting so that her gun was more easily within fast reach.

“Ex-lover. Sorry about this.”

Maggie just finished whispering when the alien leaned over their table and introduced (or, more precisely, re-introduced) Maggie to her cleavage.

“Hey, Maggie, it’s been a while. How’s life?”

“Hi Katriz, I’m good. You?”

“Good, good, but I was just thinking that it’d be better to check if somebody around here was up for some fun tonight, and then you showed up. Funny coincidence, huh?”

“It’s actually very funny, ‘cause I’m here with someone.”

As if the alien had been blind to her until a moment ago, the woman’s blue gaze turned towards Alex, appraising her quickly.

Whatever she saw made her smile, and Alex could see how Maggie had dated her (or simply hooked up with her) in the past. Apart from the chaos of colors that this woman was, what with her purple skin, delicate features, grey hair and hippie clothes, her smiling expression looked friendly and supporting.

“Well, as long as you’re moving on from that bitch…”

Alex barely caught these words, as the alien murmured them as she squeezed Maggie in a quick hug, who looked, though, suddenly embarrassed and uncomfortable.

“Um… No, we’re not-“

“Oh,” said Katriz, leaning back. Her gaze flitted quickly from Maggie to Alex and back again, a wicked smirk curving her slightly glittery lips.

“Katriz, no,” exclaimed Maggie raising her palm as the music picked up again.

“I haven’t said anything!”

“Katriz, _no._ Thanks for stopping by, have a nice evening,” Maggie’s final words were softened by her alarmed yet still blushing expression.

Katriz fake-pouted, then threw her chin back in a sudden burst of laughter.

“Okay, okay, you win this round, but because you’re so cute when you’re flustered. Be gentle with her, okay? Don’t scare her off!”

With a wink and a double gesture of two pistols going off that was so 90s it projected Alex straight back to school for a moment, Katriz sauntered away in the crowd.

Alex was still trying to wrap her head around the encounter. She didn’t know what to think about Katriz flirting with Maggie, since the latter sounded clearly disinterested and the two seemed to be on good terms, and most importantly she had an inkling that she just got flirted on too.

“Sorry about that,” said Maggie sheepishly. “You give that vibe.”

“Um, vibe?”

“Yeah, the gay vibe. I also read you wrong in the beginning actually.”

Alex had… no idea what to say to that, which reflected in her next words.

“… Oh.”

“But it’s cool. I mean, it’s not, homophobia’s not cool, it fucking sucks, but you haven’t said anything to me yet-“

“I’m not- What? I’m not homophobic.”

“Well... remember the time you brought me coffee at the precinct? How you reacted to Donato? That was a bit…”

The memory of the pot-bellied detective suddenly flashed through her mind.

“Oh my god no. It wasn’t about him. I just didn’t want your colleague thinking I was your- I mean. I’m not. I’m not good at…”

Thank goodness the food arrived then, although Alex’s stomach was reduced to knots, so all was left to her now was staring at her plate and try to avoid having Maggie hate her in any way possible. God, she had no idea how to explain herself about this.

“But you’re okay with gay people,” said Maggie with a hint of a question mark at the end, so she replied promptly.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Okay. But you’re not okay with yourself being gay.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not... okay with yourself being gay or you’re not gay?”

“I’m not…” Alex gulped, this was harder than expected, and a bit too sudden for comfort. “I’m not _gay._ ” She tried to say the word as normally as possible, but the emphasized half-whisper that she hissed over the music was anything but normal.

“Huh,” Maggie said in a tone Alex didn’t like and she frowned at her food, thinking about how stupid she was. She could explain alien biology to an army of ignorant lab assistants but she couldn’t explain herself to her partner. (Work partner, not… life partner…).

“I’m not homophobic. I don’t know how queer people go about their lives, I don’t know how people in general get together so comfortably, but queer people especially. Being so… well-adjusted with their sexuality. As if… Not as if it’s easy, I’m sure it must be very hard, but as if it’s _natural_. How do you do it?”

She looked up to find Maggie listening intently to her, curled fingers to her lips, and Fiamma staring intently at her too.

“Do what? Be gay?” asked Maggie, raising her eyebrows.

“No. Yes.”

She shook her head. This was difficult, she didn’t want to mess it up, specifically because she was talking about this all to Maggie. She saw Solferino leaning against her until he snuggled close as he usually did when he was a mass of whirling blackness and the familiarity of the gesture relaxed her a bit.

“Knowing what you want and acting according to that without fucking everything up.”

Maggie and Fiamma stared at her frowningly and she bit her lip, mustering the courage to go on.

“I’m not… I’m not good at… _intimacy_ , okay? And as for queer people… I admire them but they confuse the hell out of me at the same time. They recognize this huge thing inside of them, and they act on it despite all the bullshit society throws at them. It’s terrifying. I’m not that strong. I can’t take a closer look at what exactly my sexuality is, I don’t… I don’t think I’ll like what I find.”

She couldn’t do that, she just wasn’t that strong, these thoughts ran through her mind continually like a mantra.

“Well, if it counts for anything, I believe you’re that strong. Everybody can be that strong if they want, especially if they feel supported by their community, which is what most queer people try to create. But anyway, basically, you’re asexual. Nothing wrong with that Danvers.”

Alex waited for Maggie to elaborate on that, but she didn’t seem forthcoming.

“Asexual as in…?” she didn’t want to hazard any ridiculous deductions.

“Oh, you don’t- Well, there’s a spectrum but very simply put, very roughly summarized, asexuality lacks sexual attraction.”

Lacks…sexual attraction. Wait.

“Oh, no. I have that.” She desperately hoped that her cheeks weren’t getting colored right now, but it was most likely wishful thinking.

“Oh. Okay...”

“Yeah, it’s. That’s still good. I just don’t feel it for people in general.”

“Alright. Aliens?”

“What, no. Not that there would be anything wrong with that, but just… no.”

“Okay Danvers. You’re always welcome to tell me to piss of but let me take a step back here. There’s attraction involved, but not for people and not for aliens.”

Okay that sounded weird to Alex too.

“There is.. attraction, for a person. For a friend,” _Abort abort abort_ her mind chanted as she opened up memories she’d buried under the thick curtain of Solferino’s blackness.

“They’re not only one. Obviously. That would be creepy. There was someone else, in high school.” Was high school too far apart from now? Was it creepy to feel attraction for two people in such a long stretch of time? Should she had said college?

“But, yeah. You know. There is. Just not when I… You know. With men.” She shrugged, finally caving in to the delicious smells in front of her and biting into her sandwich. She shrugged again. “Like I said. I’m not good with that stuff.”

For a few moments they ate in silence, and Alex wondered why Fiamma was looking outside and looking furious, talking from time to time, and coaxing short, few answers from Solferino.

“Danvers.”

“Hm?”

“Ever heard of demisexuality?”

This was another term which she hadn’t heard of.

“Okay it’s in-between sexuality and asexuality. Basically it’s when a person can never think ‘I’d tap that’ when they meet another person. They need an emotional connection for anything sexual to spring up.”

She looked outside and the darkness of the poorly-lit road reflected her image. She had assumed that being uncomfortable in bed with another person was her crucible, her default status. She thought it was the least of her problems after being a Vide. She assumed that the fantasies she had about Vicky and now about Maggie were an insult to their friendship and their trust in her not to perv on them like a creepy fuck who didn’t know what to do with her feelings of lust and love.

Was she demisexual? She felt the urge to ask Solferino. Sometimes, when she stared at him, she would get a feeling of what he thought, maybe he knew better than her, he was part of her for crying out loud!

She wondered who she could talk to about stuff like this. Surely the default answer was Internet, family, friends, and colleagues. Not exactly in this order, but that was the order she was comfortable with.

She wondered if she read about demisexuality somewhere, or maybe if some character of a movie or a series was demisexual, but she came up with nothing.

She saw Solferino saying something and looked up in time to see that he was still conversing with Fiamma. When she looked up she also noticed that Maggie had extended her hand towards her on the table. Not much, but far enough that it was clearly there in a show of solidarity. She stared at her dark-colored open palm before looking into her eyes.

“Alex,” she breathed out her name and Alex did absolutely not shiver in her very warm clothes in a perfectly warm locale. “there is _nothing_ wrong in being a demisexual. Okay? You just need to make it clear to somebody who’s hitting on you on a bar or something. Look, hey, can’t do the tap and run thing. If people don’t get that, screw them.”

She smothered a shiver at Maggie’s incensed tone, at the word ‘screw’ and blurted out the first thing on her mind.

“Is demisexual like saying ‘gay’ or ‘straight’? I mean… can a person be demisexual for one gender only? Or alien-gender, too, I guess..”

“I haven’t looked into demisexuality that much but I’ve met demisexuals who were lesbians and bisexuals first. I walked up to a woman once, she was an alien but the example still stands I think. I walked up to her and she went like ‘You’re the right gender but I don’t know you, sorry.’ And this guy, he’s bi, and so friendly and sociable because he’s, well, _was_ looking for a partner but couldn’t feel anything for people who weren’t friends with him for some time.”

Nodding along, Alex took a moment of respite in her beer, hoping that the heart-stopping moment was over, but Maggie added:

“Er, do you… So… Are the two people that fell under your radar women or men?”

Nope, heart-stopping moment was still a go, she thought as she stared at the bottom of her glass, hoping it would swallow her up.

“Sorry, sorry, shutting up.”

“They are… women, yes.”

“Okay. That was really rude. Foot, meet mouth. Sorry.”

Alex shook her head absent-mindedly, her skin on fire, and thought it was about time to start eating before the food grew cold.

.

.

.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex' and Maggie's night out continues towards interesting topics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dearies! First of all, thank you so much for your unyielding support during the writing of this story. I couldn't wish for a better readership, you're all so sweet and supportive.  
> This month has been nerve-wrecking. I sat a couple of important exams, and I should have more this month and in September, so please keep me in your positive thoughts as I keep you in mine. Love you all.  
> And love, most of all, to my wonderful beta theawkwardlonelybear. I'm so grateful to her for taking the time to look over my work, unpolished as it is. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

**Hŏmo:** _Lat._  
_hŏmo, hominis, n, m, III._

Person, human being.

The original Latin name of the Humanoid category of Animas.

 

Animas belonging to this category resemble human beings as opposed to wild animals. They, for the vast majority, bipeds, and share a number of features with the human face. Non-human features such as wings, tails, multiple limbs or other appendices are to be included in the Humanoid category, as long as their sum does not outnumber the sum of humanoid features.

It is the rarest category of Animas in modern times. The most recent census in 70 countries has disclosed that less than 10% of the adult population declared their Anima to belong to the Beast category.

In the case of the Humanoid category, the results of ethnography surveys are not to be trusted completely, since in many cultures is still in place a long-lived distrust towards the unhealthy deep relationship between an individual and their Humanoid Anima.

.

.

.

 

There was only soda in her glass, and it was going to stay that way. Alcohol was still a strong siren, but since she met Director Henshaw, she didn’t trust herself with anything stronger than beer in the company of somebody who didn’t know that part of her.

Sometimes she imagined telling Maggie about her partying days, but tonight she felt raw enough already from their conversation over dinner.

And she didn’t need the alcohol anyway, she mused. The good food and playing pool had joined forces in relaxing her, and she felt enough tingles down her spine whenever Maggie bent on the table to line up her stick for the shot.

Solferino and Fiamma were watching them playing from their spot by the wall, where no Anima dared to pass by, no matter how far they had to distance themselves from their human or alien. They had been deep in conversation pretty much since the end of the awkward dinner talk. Solferino didn’t talk much, as usual, but Fiamma seemed pretty content with doing 90% of the talking.

Trying not to stare at them, Alex addressed Maggie in a hushed tone.

“Could you tell Fiamma thank you from me when you get home?” she kept her gaze on Maggie’s as Fiamma floated closer. Her hearing was way better than Alex imagined if she heard her name from a few feet away in a room half full of chattering people, and with the band playing jazz.

“It was kind of her to write everything down on the board. I didn’t know Animas could write.”

She smiled as Fiamma said something, joyful, while Maggie snickered.

“Well, it’s kind of you to call her random scribbling ‘writing.’”

After they finished snickering Alex tried to glance at the table and not at Fiamma, whose body faded into her own, from how close she was. Undoubtedly, if they weren’t in a pub full of people and aliens, Fiamma would surely been hugging the crap out of her now.

“It’s only thanks to you and her that I followed the meeting.”

They played a bit more in silence, when Maggie straightened and sauntered next to her, leaning on the table. She smelled like leather, spices, and wood, and Alex tried not to stare at the dark skin of her neck and took a sip of her soda.

“So… You only heard Solferino and only when he went full Lord Sauron on Noize’s ass?”

She snickered at the imagery and nodded.

“Yep. I still can’t believe I heard him speaking! His normal voice doesn’t sound like that?”

“God, no. It’s usually deep and gravelly and kind of a slow drawl. In fact, you’d hate it.”

“I wouldn’t!”

“You absolutely would. That waiter at Nico’s, where we had breakfast with Burgess and Lindsay? You started scowling at her when she started speaking, and I bet you were _this_ close from telling her to hurry up already.”

Alex shrugged her shoulder in response. Maggie was half right. She was used to her mother’s (and father’s) evenly-paced talk, and even more she got used to Kara’s insanely fast babbling, but she had also been irritated by the young woman’s Anima eyeing Fiamma leeringly, which made her notice that the woman herself was eyeing Maggie’s cleavage like it was her religion.

She didn’t know what to do with the fact that Maggie had noticed something like that. And she sure as hell couldn’t say the other reasons why she had been irritated with the waiter, so she shrugged.

“Anyway, no. His voice was completely different. That was…”

“Creepy,” supplied Alex.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“It’s alright. It was…”

“Something else,” amended Maggie, making her huff in laughter.

“Yeah, that’s definitely a way to put it. Okay, I shouldn’t have said creepy, but it was… weird.  Also because of what he said, you know?”

After a moment’s pause Maggie asked: “Can I ask what he said exactly?”

“Sure you can,” she looked at Maggie and raised and her eyebrows and tried not to smile too openly, especially when Maggie rolled her eyes and smiled and her cheeks curved adorably in two perfect dimples.

The lights of the pub danced on her jet black hair and caramel skin, throwing hues of violet and red on her hair and clothes, and Alex’s hand clenched and unclenched around the stick and she had to actively remind herself that she had no right to reach out and hug the adorable shorter woman.

“What did he say exactly?” spelled out Maggie through her smile.

“He said ‘excuse me’ and then ‘I beg your pardon.’”

She didn’t think that it was as funny as Maggie’s chortle of laughter made it out to be, but as she loved the way Maggie scrunched her eyes when she giggled like that, she counted it as a big success and she fought the urge to turn around and offer Solferino a fist bump.

Fiamma hopped back towards him happily and the two resumed their conversation.

“Polite and badass, way too classy for us mere mortals.”

“Shush you,” she said, nudging Maggie in her side and try not to let her touch linger inappropriately long. How long was appropriately long anyway? Why silly crushes of friends and co-workers didn’t come with an instruction manual for times like these?

"You've said earlier that Noize said something about me.." she murmured,  trailing off when Maggie’s smile turned into a thunderous frown.

Maggie scowled at the pool table, and the air around them got saturated with a nervous tension, an underlying uneasiness. Alex ignored Fiamma’s flames bursting in angry explosions from her position beside Solferino, and kept her gaze on Maggie’s taut shoulders.

"It's stupid," Maggie murmured finally, so low that if Alex hadn’t been standing so close to her, she wouldn’t have heard the words.

"It's one of those stupid bullshit rumors that people say in school. And unluckily, some people are so stupid to carry on thinking like that after school too. Some people think that if you can't hear manifested Animas by the time you start high school, you're retarded. But it's all a ruse to make you ask your Anima things about yourself that only your Anima could know, so basically embarrassing shit that you wanted to forget forever. Thank god now you can sue a coworker if they start pestering you about your Anima, so you only ever hear this shit in school or when somebody is out to get a punch in the face."

Alex hummed a sound of acknowledged. Kara had talked about such rumors, when they were in school, but she had dismissed the whole question as a cultural misunderstanding from Kara’s part.

Maggie shifted closer to her until her left elbow touched hers slightly, a point of warmth in the already warm pub, but which had Alex repress a shiver nonetheless.

"It's _bullshit_.” Spat out Maggie with such vehemence that Alex’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to hers. Maggie looked at her with a peculiar focus, and her thunderous expression and taut posture made Alex thank every deity that Maggie’s anger wasn’t directed at her.

“Lots of people can't hear manifested Animas, and there are people that can’t hear theirs. Just because there’s few of them it doesn’t mean that they are… it doesn't mean shit."

Maggie turned to her, staring at her with a serious, scowling, expression. Could it be that Maggie… was angry on her behalf? The possibility of being on the receiving end of Maggie’s protectiveness left her breathless for a moment.

"I know that.” She quickly reassured. “I can't hear Solferino, today was the first ever, and it doesn’t mean anything. I mean, I won a PhD scholarship, take _that_ school bullies."

Maggie’s anger dissipated as quickly as it arose, and Alex was tempted to raise her hand to her eyes to fight off the brightness of the shorter woman’s grin, but instead grinned back.

“How does that work? You work half the time at the DEO and you spend the rest on your PhD?” asked Maggie after a couple of shots at the table.

“Not really. I’m a full time agent. It’s just that my research is about the application of alien biology studies in crime solving, so I can conduct most of my research in the lab at the DEO and I can publish what Henshaw approves. I can’t attend all seminars, but I’m attending what I can since many are relevant for the DEO dossiers on alien biology. I know I won’t get to finish my thesis on time, but I think it’s alright. I love my work and I’m lucky already to have been accepted.”

Alex took a sip of her soda after she spoke, afraid that Maggie would latch onto the last bit. She needed to get her tongue under control, especially about her last year at college. This was Kara’s bad influence on her.

“It _is_ alright, Danvers. Don’t worry about taking your time, you’re doing cops work, lab work, and the PhD on top of it. You don’t need to do everything to perfection.”

The sentence pushed her back to a few days before, when Eliza scolded her on the phone about how little she was helping Kara acclimate to the city and how she was focusing too much on her lab job. She held her breath, and when she was sure that she wasn’t going to release it with a whimper, she blew out a slow sigh.

She thought she’d never get to hear those words, and now that she did, the bursting feeling in her chest had threatened to bring tears to her eyes. She hoped Solferino couldn’t feel what she felt then. She didn’t want him telling Fiamma what was going with her, she didn’t want Fiamma to know what a stupid overachiever she had to be to please her parents and her own pride.

In order to steer her thoughts and emotions away from that, she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind:

“Being a… what’s the proper term for people who can’t hear Animas?”

“Nihil-Audite, but people just say Non-Audite normally. Why?”

“I was thinking that Non-Audites have it way easier than Audites. Especially… um, the ones at the opposite end of Vides?”

“Omne-Audites,” muttered Maggie as she shifted to line up her stick. Right, Alex remembered the childhood stories about those.

“Yeah, those. Aren’t they just called Audites, right?”

“Yeah. Inter-Audites and Omne-Audites are so rare that they’re called simply Audites, but that’s technically wrong.”

“Hu-uh… Alright Sawyer, I give up. Draw me a mental chart here ‘cause I’m lost.” She hadn’t meant to make Maggie smile with that assertion, but she did, so in her mind she pretended that that was her goal from the start and felt victorious.

“The spectrum is Nihil-Audite, Ipse-Audite, Inter-Audite and Omne-Audite. Nihil-Audites can’t hear Animas at all. Ipse-Audites sometimes hear their own Animas when they’re not manifest. Inter-Audites sometimes can hear other people’s Animas when they’re not manifest, but it’s mostly in case of people close to them. Omne-Audites can hear all Animas when they’re not manifest.”

“Okay, I was talking about those then, the Omne-Audites. That, I would never like to be.”

Alex got herself an angled shot as she said this but Solferino and Fiamma chose that moment to detach themselves from the wall and approach the table. She felt her fingers jolt instinctively at their sudden movement but thankfully the ball slid in the pocket.

She was still sighing in relief when she straightened up and caught Maggie’s frown, a mix of confusion and disappointment.

“Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why you’d never want to be an Omne-Audite?”

Um… What.

“Are you kidding me?” she exclaimed, hoping that her tone and expression would carry the message.

Apparently they did not because Maggie kept looking at her with that frown.

“Because it sounds horrible. Hearing all Animas all the times. What if the Audite lives in a crowded area and can’t sleep at night because of all the Animas around? They’d know every dirty secret about their family members, coworkers, friends, and they’d have to keep quiet about it. What if, say, they find themselves stuck with a total pervert of an Anima but the human doesn’t say or doesn’t do anything? That would be so creepy. And all the murderers and rapists and fucking pedophiles? Imagine walking down the street and hearing all the stuff of those motherfuckers’ Animas said? And… hell, I don’t want to imagine what a crowd would sound like for Audites.”

She looked down at the table and shook head and fought down the shivers that rose up her spine. It was too much just thinking about it. Crowds were the worst for her, way too many Animas around. She dreaded the day one of their operations brought her unit in a crowd. She couldn’t rely on her shooting skills if Animas got in her line of sight.

“What if they get used to it?”

Maggie’s voice brought her out of her musings and she raised her gaze to watch Maggie, whose frown had thankfully disappeared from her forehead.

“More power to them, then. Honestly, I wouldn’t last five minutes as an Omne-Audite. I’d go out of my mind.”

“Either you pity them or think they’re insane, take your pick.”

Maggie’s snappish tone surprised her, but then she thought that Maggie had read about this stuff a lot. She obviously had developed her own opinions and feelings about the subject. Alex remembered several classmates in school being even more passionate about Vides and Audites, about Animas in general.

She tried not to look at the end of the table where Solferino and Fiamma were quietly witnessing the proceedings. She felt like she was cheating a bit, as Animas were usually a better gauge of emotions, and Fiamma had a wide range of expressions and colors from which Alex could guess Maggie’s mood.

As her eyes wandered over to the Animas, though, her guilt intensified and she quickly averted her look. She wanted to know the cause for Maggie’s snappiness by herself. She owed her partner that and more.

“Okay,” she began, raising her hands in a pacifying gesture. “I clearly phrased sometimes wrong because I don’t pity Audites, and I don’t think they’re crazy. The exact contrary. I think they must be the strongest people on this planet because they’re constantly bombarded with everybody’s thoughts and secrets. So they hide themselves, rightly so, they need to get used to their ability, as you said.

What I was saying is that by hiding constantly Audites may not be very well-adjusted people. I can’t imagine little boys or girls listening to every dirty crap people think and growing up fine. That calls for traumas. Deep, ever-lasting traumas. So adult Audites kind of scare the crap out of me because they must have insane pokerface. And in our line of work that’s really troublesome, that’s the first sign of a strong personality, of a very strong mind.”

Maggie turned wordlessly to the pool table and shuffled in place for a moment, strangely and suddenly uncertainly, and if Alex had to find a word for it, she would say that the tough cop was embarrassed about something, before she seemingly regained her composure and lined up for her shot.

Alex snapped out of her stare and immediately faked browsing the room so she could avoid looking at the expanse of skin that was exposed with the movement. Too late. She caught sight of another color beneath Maggie’s shirt and she mentally thanked Fiamma for reminding Maggie to put a camisole on.

Winter on the streets of National City was not to be underestimated, and she worried about Maggie getting the flu. Or even a cold. On anything actually. After all, she had every right to be concerned about her partner’s health. The success of their operations depended on it.

 “So… you admire Omne-Audites?”

“Well, Yes,” she replied instinctively, overlooking the crowd. Honestly, she did. Although, for obvious reasons, she was also terrified of them, duh-

“Terrified.”

She turned to Maggie, realizing that she said that out loud.

Maggie’s expression was pinched into a subtle frown, and Alex knew that she wouldn’t have recognized it as such before she became Maggie’s colleague and spent so much time with her.

Alex couldn’t fathom the cause of Maggie’s reaction. She thought it was natural to fear Audites, just she like thought everybody was in their right mind to fear her ability to see Animas. Maybe there was something else on Maggie’s mind that was troubling her.

“Of course I am. I mean, who wouldn’t? What if somebody has a secret that they absolutely can’t share with anybody else? A dangerous secret, the kind that-“ _that would get me on a vivisection table in a top-secret, maximum-security government facility._

“the kind that not even their family is safe with. It would be dangerous if the person’s Anima were to blurt it out and the Audite heard it by chance.”

_What if a Vide’s Anima said something about their ability, thinking that they were alone but they weren’t, there was an Audite nearby, and the Audite would go to the press, would talk about it on the Internet, and the government came and grabbed the Vide, and said hey, let’s vivisect her and try to steal her sight for military purposes._

You know.

Something like that.

“Earlier we said that Audites must keep certain information to themselves in order not to attract attention to themselves and now you’re saying you would trust one only as far as you can throw them because you think they’d go around telling all your secrets.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Some information… It’s different. There are some things that need to stay secret, some things… some things that a person would want to say, to divulge, because they’d think they’d be safe from any consequence.”

The only living beings on the planet to know about her being a Vide were Kara, Kara’s Anima and Fiamma.

She needed to trust Fiamma because that choice had been taken from her, for which she was still pissed at Solferino, while Kara understood the value of life-threatening secrets better than any other human or alien on the planet. The fact that there weren’t many substances on the planet that could make Kara drunk or take away her clarity of mind was just a big bonus.

The topic and the way her thoughts were turning made her antsy, so she polished the end of her pool stick even though it didn’t need polishing and kept her gaze averted on the pool tables and the other players. If she were to look up at Maggie’s expression, she would have caught such an unguarded and vulnerable expression that would have left her breathless.

“Do you feel the same way about Omni-Vides too?” the name startled her so abruptly that she looked at Maggie with a dangerously alarmed expression and she schooled it down to a neutral one as Maggie sheepishly took a sip of her non-alcoholic drink.

“I guess calling them Vide is wrong then?”

“Technically, yes. The spectrum is the same as Audites. Nihil-Vide, Ipse-Vide, Inter-Vide, Omne-Vide. Nihil-Vide people are basically non-existent, they see only their own Animas, only when they’re manifest, and blurrily. Ipse-Vides are the norm. They can see their own and others’ Animas only when they’re manifest. Inter-Vides can catch glimpses of non-manifest Animas. There’s a spectrum here, some can see only their family’s Animas, some strangers’. Omne-Vides are a world on their own. It’s said that they can see all Animas, always. Some countries’ legends say that there’s a spectrum here too. Apparently some Omne-Vides see blurry Animas, while others see them clearly. But we’re talking about the stuff of kids’ tales. You know, like _The Snow Queen_.”

“Oh, yeah. The queen can see the children’s Animas as if they’re manifest and she chooses the ones she likes best for her garden of ice statues.”

After another couple of shots, Alex commented. “You sure do know your Anima facts.”

“Told you, I liked reading about this stuff in school. It’s interesting.” Maggie shrugged.

Alex hummed and shrugged too. She wished she could see all this as some interesting reading.

“So what do you think about them?” inquired Maggie, leaning against the table and distracting Alex with her soft curves.

Alex shrugged, then regretted it. She could have feigned to forget what Maggie was asking about.

She pointedly kept her gaze on the balls on the table as she noticed their Animas approaching the table from the corner of her vision. She didn’t dare to let her eyes wander and check the Anima’s expressions, or even whether they were still talking.

She need to quickly think about something to steer the conversation away from the current topic.

“Well, I think Vides are badasses.”

Maggie’s light, no-nonsense tone caught her by surprise and she let out a loud burst of laughter before she could catch herself and tone it down.

She looked up to see Maggie’s eyes twinkling with mirth at her and her dimples in full display and she had to take a step back and take a refreshing sip of her drink, hoping that it would cool the raging hot skin of her face, neck and breasts.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I _do_ mean that.”

“You really don’t. Imagine a person who could see every single Anima in sight. Imagine them being in this pub, right now. I bet you’re actually terrified.”

She quickly leaned down to inspect whether she could pull the time shot she had spotted.

She wasn’t sure what she was best. On one hand, she wanted to squash her feelings towards Maggie before they bloomed into something bottomless and unstoppable by pushing Maggie to say horrible things about Vides. On the other hand, she wanted to push Maggie to explain why she looked up to Vides, to have this one great moment of pure joy about somebody’s feeling about her abilities, and live with this knowledge while she tried to squash her feelings for Maggie in some other way.

“I won’t deny that the thought of a stranger capable of seeing whatever Fiamma’s doing all the time really unnerves me. Animas are images ourselves, they’re part of ourselves. For the most part, what Fiamma does reflects on me and vice-versa. Having something like so exposed-“

“See?” she exclaimed, fighting the tug at the base of her throat. She straightened back since there was no way that she could make that shot now.

“It’s what I was saying about Audites.”

“It’s not the same Danvers. Omne-Audites get a clear sound from Animas close to them, while Vides can see Animas for however far their eyes can see. The scope is different.”

“I don’t think so. Audites risk sensory overload much more than Vides.”

“Now it’s your turn at cracking jokes.” Scoffed Maggie “Hearing Animas would be like hearing animals, or humans, or aliens. You can tune it out with practice. But being able to see Animas all the time, what if they do something distracting in the workplace? What if you’re in a dangerous line of work and can’t afford stuff like in your daily life? Omne-Vides have it fucking hard and you can’t tell me otherwise and I think they deserve our respect for keeping their cool in their every day life even though their routine must be full of all the weird shit that Animas do.”

Alex failed at smothering her snort.

“It’s not the same Sawyer. Just imagine seeing Animas all your life as if they were actual people, with the only difference that these walk while some of those funny-looking creatures float or fly. You just learn to ignore them and go along. Audites, on the other hand. Secrets, remembers? Murderers and perverts and criminals. What if you woke up an Omne-Audite tomorrow and you heard somebody’s Anima going on about how good it was to do some horrible thing to somebody else? It’s not like you can walk up to the police department and say ‘Hey I just heard this piece of shit Anima saying this and that.’”

Alex turned to the table, convinced that Maggie would take her time in thinking about what she said, but the shorter woman replied immediately.

“They need to live with it and leave it to justice system to go on its course. Or if they’re fan of the Big Guy, they might wait for Superman to save the day. Either way, they must put up with it and go on with their lives, otherwise they’d either have a mental breakdown every day or they’d become friggin’ vigilantes!”

“Exactly! They need to bottle it up and carry on. Vides don’t have it so hard. They just need to learn to ignore Animas and go about their day.”

“And what if your coworkers’ Animas do silly shit all day and you can’t concentrate on work? Or what if somebody’s Anima looks like a total creep while the person looks all meek? Wouldn’t that freak you out, that would definitely freak me out. And what if family members or coworkers act like everything’s good between them but their Animas fight each other all the time instead? Or, even worse, couples!”

“Some Animas are not that mobile, especially those without a settled shape. Plus many don’t have so many features to have actual expressions. Some don’t have mouths, some don’t have eyes, some don’t have limbs. Sometimes there’s barely anything to look at.”

She scoffed as she lined up her shot and took it. Phew. Another sunk!

“Always better than hearing Animas all the time,” she commented absent-mindedly.

“I don’t think so. Like some Animas don’t have weird looks, there are also introvert Animas. Some people can be chatterboxes but their Animas may be quiet all the time, some may whisper instead of speaking out loud, some don’t know how to talk well and they don’t make any sense. You won’t win this one Danvers.”

She looked up at that last remark, and tried not to smile at Maggie’s dimples, or to stare at the curve her hips drew as she leaned on the pool table. The angle Maggie leaned at had lowered her shirt enough that a good portion of her collarbone was showing and Alex had to take a moment to remind herself that she wasn’t supposed to find her colleague’s collarbone sexy. She had to get a grip for goodness’ sake!

“I didn’t know that there was a competition.”

“Catch up Danvers! Let’s see who’s more badass, Omne-Audites or Omne-Vides?”

The laughter was tugged out of her chest so intensely that for a moment she was distinctly heard over the loud live music of the pub.

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End file.
